A disorganized fridge can immediately become a big problem. A messy fridge can doubtlessly threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The really good news is that you can properly sidestep these obstacles by using a handful of simple organizational strategies. Keeping your fridge organized makes the most of your available space and keeps everything fresh and ready to eat.
Clean and Sort
The first step to organizing a fridge is cleaning and sorting all your items. Properly take everything out of the refrigerator, watching out for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Remove anything that is past the expiration date or looks gross. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not obviously sure how long it has been in there, throw it out. As regards your food, it’s right to err on the side of caution.
With everything out of the fridge, take the time to clean its interiors earnestly. Wash and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins, using hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. In doing so, you will get started with a clean fridge for your new organization system.
Label Everything
The succeeding step to an organized fridge is to keep an inventory of how long your food has been there. Conceding that quite a lot of pre-packaged foods will come with an expiration or sell-by date on them, for fruits and veggies or food that you bring home or that is leftover from meals, you’ll need to have a system to keep track of when it was added to the fridge and when it will need to be thrown out.
One effective tip is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could undertake the same thing for other perishables inside of your fridge. By noting both when you brought them home and when they need to be used, you can establish that you are using up the groceries you buy before they spoil and avoid eating leftovers that can make you sick.
Use Containers
Keeping loose items tidy in a fridge, absolutely fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be hard. Think of using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and completely make sure you have everything you’re looking for. Aside from that, examine procuring quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers frequently.
You can furthermore use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were brought in. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of easily spoiled products much easier.
Develop a System
As you initiate replacing items, it’s really important to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will habitually know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. Take one example, always keep in mind that certain items should really be kept in certain places.
Meat should systematically be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. Aside from that, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil as quickly as possible when exposed to warm air quite often. You can supplementarily separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for really messy items to prevent spills.
Plan Ahead
In case your fridge is clean and organized, the principal thing you can act on is a plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be cleaned up, and old items thrown out intermittently. Reckon creating a cleaning schedule to establish that your fridge stays organized. For instance, you could set a day of the week or month to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By carrying out this schedule consistently, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few can be happy with.
By applying these easy tips and tricks, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less struggle than you thought was possible!
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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021
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