How To Organize The Fridge : 6 Basic Tips

Organizing the fridge is easy, you might think. Yes, it is, until you find stale food or expired condiments happily sitting in it for weeks.

You are not alone. I have been there, and know how much daunting it is to organize the fridge every single day.

The good part is that you do not have to organize the fridge every single day, if you follow the following steps.

I am assuming that you have a standard two door or a four door fridge with a separate freezer section.

If you have smaller one, you can easily generalize as these tips work for any fridge. I have also outlined some special ideas for a short-sized fridge at the end of the article.

With no further ado, let’s get started.

1. Get Your Basics Right

Of course, first thing first. Always keep the raw meat, fish and shrimp within an airtight container tucked in the deep freezer. That will not only keep the items fresh, but keeping them in a separate compartment will ensure that there is no foul smell in the fridge. This is the first basic step of organizing the fridge.

2.Check The expiry Date Of The Condiment:

When you are in a hurry, you just take out the condiments and never bother to check the expiry date. Of course, I get you. It is simply not possible to check every mayo you use or every sauce you eat, when you have to dash to work.

Think for a moment. Is it a big task to check the expiry dates once a month at least? Remember, these are processed foods and they do have an expiration date!

Another Advantage? Yes, you got it. You can throw out the old condiments and gain that extra space.

Bonus tip for extra savings :

Once you check the expiry date, you can also note it down on a small sticky and paste it on the condiment. This tag gives you a heads-up that those guys are going to expire soon. Go ahead. Plan and buy them while the discounts are on!

3. What Kind Of Food Do You Keep In The Freeze?

This would typically be dependant on your lifestyle and on your meal planning. If you are a very busy working professional for example, you’d always like to keep chopped vegetables as well as cooked vegetables ready for the next day.

By the way, I have a blog on meal planning too, you can check it out!

I am assuming that you keep everything – that is raw vegetables, chopped vegetables, half-cooked food as well as fully prepared meals.

The idea is that each category of food should have its own designated space in the fridge.

Keep the fresh vegetables in the veggie tray. They should not loiter around your entire fridge.

Keep the chopped veggies in containers on one section of a tray along with the , half-cooked food. This is because when you are looking for fully cooked meals, you will know that this tray is not the right guy and you can spare yourself from fiddling in here.

Keep the fully prepared meals in a completely different tray, separate from the half cooked food and chopped veggie containers.

I know organizing like this sounds difficult, but the more you practice it, the more it becomes your second nature to keep proper items in their designated places.

4. Label Your Containers To Organise The Fridge

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to label your food containers unless you use all transparent boxes. Without tags, I find myself fumbling on one container to look for chopped coriander only to find a chopped cabbage in there. This is such a waste of time, trust me!

5. Maintain A Running Index Of The Contents

Maintain a note of what items are present there in the fridge for your convenience.

I suggest so because sometimes in the midst of all the other things happening in our life, we tend to forget if we have a chopped cabbage somewhere kept or maybe a fresh brinjal lying out there. So it is always a good idea to keep a running index.

You don’t have to be perfect while maintaining this (which I understand, is quite tough). However, having an index like this will give you a rough idea of what to expect when you open the fridge. This is also a very basic step to organize the fridge.

When I was working from home, I found it to be a gem because I could see what I already had in my storage without even coming to the refrigerator and checking it.

Bonus tip for extra savings : When you maintain a list like this, you can easily order your groceries well beforehand, because this note eliminates the additional step of opening the fridge and checking the whereabouts.

6. Keep the Jacks with the Jacks and the Jones with the Jones

Consider a particular preparation- like a sandwich or a Chinese. When you are preparing Chinese Fried Rice, say, you would require sauces like tomato, red chilies sauce etc, while when you are preparing sandwich you would probably require mayonese, cheese and such other things.

Why not keep the sauces together on one shelf and the sandwich friends on another?

Keep the cheese, butter, jam, spreads, mayonese together in one group – While preparing sandwich, it is easier to locate them when they are together on one portion of side rack, rather than to locate one missing jam all over the fridge. This will greatly help you to organise the fridge.

Similarly, I can say the same for sauces – Keep the chilli sauce, the tomato sauce, the vinegar and whatever other sauces you use for Chinese dishes, together. This is because when you prepare Chinese and one important sauce is missing, you would hate to look for it in every corner of the fridge.

This is closely related to time saving tips for a busy day, I have a link here.

7. And Of Course, Don’t Miss Out On The Fun

You won’t find pleasure in working if you do not keep a stuff or two for pleasure, which I always do. For example, I like ice creams, cold drinks, and chocolates, and I make sure that I have some of them always at my fingertips. It is my guilty pleasure and also an inspiration to organize the fridge.

However, If You Have A Smaller Fridge..

The beauty of having a short-spaced refrigerator is that you have to spend a tad less effort to organize the fridge. The shorter the space, the lesser the items, and the easier is to arrange.

In this case you have to understand your priority. Understand that the basic function of a fridge is to store cooked foods (so that they don’t get spoiled) and raw vegetables and fruits. You may also keep some basic sauce and a bit of cheese and butter and chocolates. This totally depends on you and your needs. However, the tips that I mentioned earlier can be applied for a small fridge as well.

What kind of refrigerator do you have and how do you organize?

Do let me know in comments.

Also, if you are interested in wellness, I have an article pointing to how important it is to stay in the present, rather than thinking about the past and the future.

Secret Sauce Of Healthy Living: Stay In The Present

Enjoy, keep reading and see you in next article.