A disorganized fridge can speedily become a big problem. A messy fridge can threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The great news is that you can handily steer clear of these concerns by using various 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 out of the refrigerator, looking for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Eliminate anything that is past the expiration date or looks disgusting. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not certain how long it has been in there, throw it out. In regards to your food, it’s perfect to err on the side of caution.
With everything out of the fridge, take the time to clean its interiors cautiously. Wash and dry all surfaces, counting inside drawers and bins, taking advantage of hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. Thus, you will begin 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. Although lots 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 have 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 advantageous tip is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could accomplish 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 make it a point 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, particularly fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be tedious. Reckon using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and make certain you have everything you’re searching for. In addition, think of obtaining quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers habitually and repeatedly.
You can, in addition, use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were bought. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of temporary items so much easier.
Develop a System
As you set off replacing items, it’s vital to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will, every time, know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. For instance, remember that particular items should be kept in certain places.
Meat should often be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. Equally, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil rapidly when exposed to warm air all too often. You can furthermore separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for untidy and messy items to prevent spills.
Plan Ahead
If your fridge is clean and organized, the key thing you can execute is a plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be washed, and old items are thrown out at times. Take into account creating a cleaning schedule to make it a point that your fridge stays organized. Take one example, you could select a day of the week or month to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By executing this frequently, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few adore.
By using these simple and easy pointers, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less work than you thought likely!
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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021
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