A chaotic fridge can swiftly evolve into a large problem. From questionable leftovers to missing ingredients, a disordered fridge can pose a threat to your health and budget. The big news is that you can surely avoid these problems by using a few simple organizational strategies. By keeping your fridge organized, you can take advantage of your available space and keep everything fresh and ready to eat.
Clean and Sort
The first step to organizing a fridge is to clean and sort all of your fridge items. Draw everything out of the refrigerator, checking over expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Remove anything that is past the expiration date or looks rotten. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not definitely sure 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, make the effort to deep-clean your fridge’s interiors. Applying hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution, wide down and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins. In this manner, you will get started with a clean fridge for your new organization system.
Label Everything
The next procedure to an organized fridge is to get a record of how long your food has been there. Even though numerous pre-packaged foods will be presented 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 need to have a system to keep track of when it was added to the fridge and when it will have to be thrown out.
One effective pointer is to have a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could conduct the same thing for other perishables, using the inside of your fridge. By recording both when you brought them home and when they need to be used, you can better make sure that you are using up the groceries you buy before they spoil and avoid eating leftovers that can make you ill.
Use Containers
Maintaining loose items decently tidy in a fridge can be toilsome, mainly things such as fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars. To stop clutter and always remember that you have everything you’re looking for at hand, make use of clear storage bins to group loose items together. Try investing in some quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you to store food safely and mitigate waste by reusing your containers again and again.
You can further use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the dates things were added to the refrigerator. Opting for bins and storage containers in your fridge will give space for larger items elsewhere and more swiftly track expiration dates of perishable items.
Develop a System
As you begin replacing items, it’s crucial to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, that you will continually get to know where things are, and second, that it can make your food last longer and safer. As an instance, note that certain items should be kept in certain places.
Meat should always be kept on the lowest shelf to refrain from dripping and contaminating other food. Likewise, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil quickly in the case that it’s exposed to warm air very frequently. You can similarly separate your fruits and vegetables and have trays for messy items to impede spills.
Plan Ahead
Supposing your fridge is clean and organized, the most imperative thing you can do is to make a plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge still has to be cleaned, and old items are thrown out every so often. Take into account designing a cleaning schedule to make sure that your fridge stays organized. For illustration, you could choose a day of the week or month to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce, and wiping down fridge surfaces. By doing this constantly, you can avoid the terrible deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few love.
By sticking to these worry-free points, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less effort than you would have thought possible!
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