

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Get Organized Month - Organize Your Refrigerator Freezer

Happy Inauguration Day! What a historic day for our country! I hope you get to watch history being made as we welcome our first black president.

Our daughter, Sara, arrived here from Kazakhstan on Sunday and we're enjoying our visit with her! We haven't seen her in 1 1/2 years. We're going to run some errands and be back by the time the inauguration starts.

If you have taken the day off today, here's a project you can do while watching the festivities: organizing your refrigerator freezer. Every once in a while I like to take stock of what I have, what needs to be tossed, what I need to use up, etc. It doesn't take long, and it helps you stay on top of what's in there.

I like to use clear plastic shoe boxes (without the lids) in my freezer to house like foods: veggies, fruits, breads, meats, etc. I get mine from the dollar store. Since they're clear, I can see at a glance what is housed in each container. And I can just slide them out without having an avalanche at my feet.

When I have leftover veggies or meat that would be appropriate for a soup, I'll put them in the designated container. Leftover fruits I'll use for smoothies or fruit compote. It's like having a free meal when you use those little bits of leftovers that no one wants to eat. How about a pot of soup tonight?

When I have an overabundance of some item I try to freeze it before it goes bad so as not to waste food and money. For example, some weeks our bananas are eaten and other weeks they are not. So if they are going bad, I peel and freeze them, to use for banana bread. They look really ugly when you thaw them, but they make wonderful banana bread.

I keep my coffee on the door of the freezer for easy access. We have A LOT of coffee, so I use one shelf for decaf and the other for regular.

I try to keep items in our refrigerator freezer that we use often and store less-used items in our chest freezer.

Share your tips with us! (If you receive this blog by email and want to comment, this link will take you back to my blog.)

More blogs on similar subjects:
Decluttering in 5 - Check out the Shelf Life of Your Spices
Get Organized Month - Clean out the Freezer

If you need more help on organizing your kitchen, take a gander at Three Steps to Organizing Your Kitchen.