I don’t know about you guys, but I panic shopped a lot during the first few weeks of this pandemic. Now that I’m home with all my piles of food, my fridge is so full I can barely get the door shut! Being prepared and having a good stock is always a good idea, but what if your refrigerator is super full? You can still organize your fridge even if it’s REALLY full, here are some tips to help!
Purge Expired Food
No matter when you decide to go through your fridge, I’m willing to bet that you can find at least one or two things that are past their prime. Sauces, condiments, and eggs don’t last forever, but it’s sometimes difficult to know exactly when they expire.
Take some time to shift through some of your food items and look at what’s expired. You can easily get rid of some of the unnecessary things in your fridge by just getting rid of expired food.
Think About Spacing
Spacing matters a lot in your fridge! Cold air sinks, which means the bottom of your refrigerator is going to be the coldest area of your fridge. If you have a freezer fridge, then the bottom will be the coldest shelf. However, if you have an ice maker in your fridge, the top might be the coldest.
The door is going to be your least cold part of the refrigerator, so you want to store items here that aren’t perishable. Spacing and what parts of your fridge are the coldest can help you better store items in your fridge to lengthen their shelf life.
Create an Eat First Area
We’ve all left leftovers in the fridge and forgot about them, or lost something to the back of your refrigerator. Maybe you have Easter chocolate that fell behind one of your shelves. Don’t wait until a year from now to find those items!
Create an eat first area in your fridge for things that will go bad quickly or soon. This will ensure you move through this inventory first and that they don’t become forgotten.
Contain Smaller Items
Sauce packets and other small items are challenging to store in a fridge setting. They roll around and become hard to keep up with. Contain smaller items in bins or Ziploc bags to ensure that they stay together, and you don’t lose track of them. This will also help make sure sauce packets and other tiny items don’t get crushed by heavier items in the fridge.
Remove Bulky Packaging
If you have an already full fridge, try to remove some of the bulky packagings. I’m not
suggesting that you pour out your 2 Litres of soda into smaller containers, but maybe take your 12 pack of drinks out of their boxes. This will help free up some of the room in your fridge so that way you can have more room to work with.
Depending on your needs, it may even be worthwhile to invest in a few organizers for your fridge to keep things contained. What works for you will mostly depend on the size and layout of your refrigerator.
Take Out Anything That Doesn’t Need to Be in the Fridge
Many fruits and vegetables don’t HAVE to stay in the fridge. Lemons, onions, and many other items can be stored outside of the refrigerator for weeks! In addition to these items, don’t store things you don’t need to!
Keep your salad dressings or ketchup bottles in your pantry until you open them. By waiting to store them in the fridge till necessary, it will save you some room and keep things from getting too cluttered. If you must store them in your fridge, store only ONE. Then when you’ve used it up, replace it with a fresh one.
Create Sections in Your Fridge
If you want an easy to manage fridge situation, consider making sections in your fridge instead of trying to put a lot of bins in there. Creating sections in your fridge means it will be easier to find what you’re looking for, but you can also easily manage your fridge organization.
If you want to use bins to create sections within your fridge, feel free to do so. But with this system, it’s not entirely necessary. You can still accomplish the same thing by categorizing with shelves or bins within your fridge.
Keeping your fruit in one drawer, veggies in another, and one shelf for drinks is still creating sections! It might not be Pinterest worthy, but it will still get the job done!
If you are looking to organize your fridge, don’t wait until it’s empty! You can still organize your refrigerator while it’s full, and you’ll be glad you did once it’s done! Sure, an empty fridge is always going to be easier, but it can still be done.