How To Organize Food in Your Refrigerator

Introduction

You get an immense level of satisfaction when you keep your home organized. Your fridge is a significant part of your home and keeping it organized can be difficult, especially so when it is damaged or doesn’t work properly. You can get your broken fridge fixed by a professional by searching for “refrigerator repair near me”. For now, let’s check out how you can organize food in your refrigerator:

The Organization

Pre-organizing – before you start organizing the food in your fridge you need to do some prep work. You need to clean and disinfect every surface before you can organize the food. Empty the fridge completely so that you can wipe down hardened spills, stains, and dirt easily. You can also work in sections to prevent sensitive items from spoiling while outside the refrigerator. You can also use a large cooler box to store those items while you clean the fridge.

After you wipe down the interior walls, base, and chambers of the refrigerator, sanitize all the surfaces. Don’t miss out on the compartment doors and shelves. If you have drawers, you can pull them out and soak them in hot and soapy water before you wipe them down and put them back inside the refrigerator.

After you clean the refrigerator and reassemble it make sure to add a deodorizer to prevent unpleasant smells. You can buy fridge deodorizers that stick to the wall or simply put baking soda in a container and put it at the back of your refrigerator.

Place a “Consume First” box on the top shelf – Get an empty clear plastic box and place it on the top shelf after labeling it as “Consume First”. This box can be used to place anything that’s closing in on its expiry date. You can also label leftovers with the date they were made and use the reference chart on Fodsafety.gov to figure out how long they will last. When you don’t know the expiry date of an item, keep it in the box to practice caution.
Use a lazy Susan – The back of your refrigerator is similar to the void. It eats up all your food until they get past their expiration date and fill up your fridge with a foul smell. You can fix this with a lazy Susan. It helps you rotate multiple items with ease and get access to any item you want. Keep opened snacks, jars, and condiments on the lazy Susan.
Hang baskets – Buy hang baskets that can stick to the side of the fridge walls to make the most use of the available space. You can also DIY such baskets with suction cups. They can be used for small items that are easily lost inside the large chambers of the refrigerator. For instance, you can use these baskets for cheese rollups, pre-made lunch meat, dips, and storing cheese.
Use file organizers and label the door – Paperwork has transitioned to the digital space for years. That leaves you with plenty of useful file organizers that can be implemented in the refrigerator. The file organizer boxes have the perfect shape to store all sorts of snacks. Anything from pouches, drinks to yogurt packs and even chopped fruits. You can also label these file organizers to store one type of food.

Since the door shelves are already limited in space and provide ample organization, you can label them to make your task easier. For instance, one shelf can be dedicated to sauces and labeled as such while another door shelf can be reserved for sandwich dressings.

Use curtain ring clips – If your fridge is old and has wire shelves this is the best organization hack for you. You can hang lettuce, shredded cheese, and other bagged items from the wire shelves with curtain clips. Clip the curtain clips over the shelf wires and hang the rolled bags easily.
Line bottom of crisper drawers with paper towels – Crisper drawers are some of the most awful places to clean. You can solve that problem by laying them with paper towels before loading them with fruits and veggies. The towels will collect the onion peels, potato husks, and broccoli crumbs as they tend to fall off easily. You can replace them every few weeks. This makes cleaning a breeze.
Use drawer dividers – Grab a bunch of dividers used in the clothing drawers and use them in the crisper drawers for better organization. It’s best to use adjustable dividers since you’ll buy different produce each week and will need to adjust according to their size. This allows you to keep items like lettuce and spinach together and keep them away from aromatics like ginger, garlic, and onions.
Master humidity control – You need to learn how to use the humidity controls for your crisper drawers to keep your veggies and fruits fresh and make them last longer. If you have multiple crisper drawers, you don’t need to solve a puzzle. Keep one drawer to a high humid setting and another one at low. This allows you to keep appropriate items in those drawers and not tinker with the settings every time.

When you buy easily perishable items like apples, pears, avocados, and most fruits that emit ethylene gas, put them inside the low humidity drawer. The same holds for veggies like broccoli, cabbage, carrots, and more that emit ethylene gas. Ethylene makes those fruits and veggies ripen faster and rot quicker. The low humidity drawer keeps extracting that gas along with the excess moisture.

On the other hand, you can put leafy greens like herbs, lettuce, and spinach in the high humidity drawer. This helps to keep those items fresh for the longest time.

Conclusion

As you can see, keeping the food in your refrigerator organized is an easy task when you make the most out of the available space and apply clever use of boxes and other accessories. On the other hand, if your fridge is broken, you can search for “refrigerator repair near me” and hire a professional to fix it for you.