Organising the fridge

Find tips here on how to clean your fridge before you start organising.

Do you feel that you don’t have enough room in your fridge?  There’s a possibility you do have the room you just need to organise it more efficiently.  Organising your fridge won’t take much time and you’ll find it easy to maintain, so lets take a look at a few ideas for you.

ORGANISING THE FRIDGE

• Designate area’s in your fridge and group all like items together, such as, beverages, condiments, dairy, meat, fruit etc.
• Create easy access to everyday items by placing on the top shelf.
• Your fridge will stay organised if you remember to always return items to their ‘home’.
• Make sure everything is covered otherwise they will take on odours from food around them.
• When purchasing meat from the supermarket, I grab a plastic bag from the fruit and veg section to wrap around the meat to prevent bleeding and dripping on other groceries and to keep the fridge hygienic.
• Potato’s and onions need to be stored in the pantry.
• When returning from grocery shopping I cut all vegetables and place in Tupperware’s Fridgesmart containers.  I do this for two reasons, firstly it makes them last longer.  With the vents at the front it allows the food to breath and the waved bases prevents food from being stored in moisture.  I have found my food to last for at least 2 weeks, alot longer than stored in the crisper of my fridge in the plastic bags from the veg dept.  Carrots will last up to 4 weeks.  Secondly and more importantly, for convenience, we have busy afternoons and when it’s time to prepare dinner it’s easy to get out the containers and grab handfuls of precut vegetables rather than taking time out to chop them up.  If you can’t afford Tupperware consider an alternative as I just can’t recommend more how this has helped our busy nights having all vege’s precut.
• I also store deli meats and cheese in Tupperware’s Clear Mates containers, again it keeps deli meat/cheeses to last longer in the fridge.  My deli meat lasts up to 1 week.
• To maximise your space use square containers rather than round.
• As I don’t store any vegetables in the crisper that’s where I keep the kids yoghurt, poppers and other snacks.
• I keep my eggs in their cartons, so I use the egg compartment to store butter, open packets of chocolate buds and melts, aloe vera gel and cold packs for kids injuries.
• Make sure you don’t put hot food in the fridge, it needs to come down to room temperature before doing so.
• If you have left overs, place in a closed container.  Keep at the front of the fridge so you don’t forget about it or place in the freezer.

Once your fridge is organised you’ll soon see that you have more space.  A well organised fridge at least 3/4 full will consume less electricity which is a bonus!

Below I have taken some photo’s of my fridge after I have done my grocery shop and chopped up all the vege’s.