A disorganized fridge can abruptly become a big problem. A messy fridge can unavoidably threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The wonderful news is that you can, without difficulty, get away from these risks by using one or more 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. Pull everything carefully out of the refrigerator, looking out for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Pull out and discard anything that is past the expiration date or looks gross. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you are not totally assured how long it has been in there, throw it out. When it comes to your food, it’s best to err on the side of caution. With everything out of the fridge, take the time to clean its interiors diligently. Wash and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins, taking advantage of hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. By doing so, you will start out with a clean fridge for your new organization system.
Label Everything
The next step to an organized fridge is to keep an inventory of how long your food has been there. Granting that various 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 enatil 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 and easy tip is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could execute 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 really make sure 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, exactly like fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be actually difficult. Regard using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and ascertain you have everything you’re looking for. At the same time, think of buying quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers again and again.
You can supplementarily use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were acquired. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of perishable substances manageable.
Develop a System
As you begin replacing items, it’s basic to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will, in any case, know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. For instance, take into account that some items should be kept in certain places.
Meat should consistently be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. On top of that, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil promptly when exposed to warm air often. You can, on top of that, separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for unkempt and messy items to prevent spills.
Plan Ahead
Lastly, if and when your fridge is clean and organized, the chief thing you can implement is a plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be deeply cleaned, and old items thrown out every once in a while. Think of creating a cleaning schedule to really make sure that your fridge stays organized. Take one example, you could pick a day of the week or month for you to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By enacting this routinely, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few relish doing.
By applying these manageable tips, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less hard work than you thought at all possible!
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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021
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