Whether you live with a large family, are planning to host a feast for a group of friends, or are just stocking up for busy days, your freezer is packed most of the time. You must organize your freezer or opt for warehouse storage, where you can store your excess food items and access them only when you need them. If you are looking for freezer storage, you can find excellent freezer storage here. But if you want to keep your food at home, below are tips to organize your freezer.
Label and Date Your Food
Label and date the food that you are freezing. This especially holds good for homemade food, as it may have a lesser life than store-bought food. This way, you will be able to find things in your freezer easily and know when something is coming closer to its expiry date.
Freeze Things Flat
You can store more things in a small space when you freeze items flat. Avoid bulky plastic food storage boxes. These containers take up too much space and prevent you from using your freezer to maximum capacity. Instead, buy ziplock bags and put your food in them. Let these bags freeze, laying them flat. Once the food items are set, you can move them to a bin or anywhere else in the freezer where you want to keep them.
Freeze Food in Usable Portions
While throwing an entire packet of meat or other food items in the freezer is tempting, removing it from the store pack and freezing it in usable portions is advisable. You won’t be left with a large frozen mass of food when you need just a few pieces or a small portion. You will be able to remove one of the frozen packs, thaw it, and use it.
Sort and Group Your Food Items
Sort all your food into groups and store them. This way, you will find all the similar food items in one place in the freezer. You can put them in clear boxes if you have a large freezer or clear plastic bags. You can even use color-coded storage bins or mark your packets with color-coded tapes to avoid mix-ups. Avoid putting fruits and vegetables together with meat to prevent them from getting spoilt due to leakage or spillage.
Avoid Boxes with Irregular Shapes
Large boxes with irregular shapes take up a lot of space in your freezer. They cannot be stacked on top of each other and make your freezer look stuffed. Instead, please take the food items from the storage boxes and put them in stackable bins. This will free up space and make your freezer look very organized.
Store Half-Used Bags Using Binder Clips
If you have wire freezer shelves, one of the best ways to store half-used bags is to hang them on the shelves using binder clips. This way, the bulky plastic bags will not lay stacked untidily on top of each other, and you will get extra space to store other stuff in the freezer.
Make an Inventory and Stick it On the Fridge.
When you have a lot of things to store, you can forget what is already there inside. You will buy things you already have, making a bigger mess in your freezer. One way to handle this issue is to list all the items stored in your freezer and stick them by the side of the fridge. Anytime anything gets over, you can either strike it off on the list or add it to a separate list you are maintaining to purchase finished items.
Use Magnetic Containers if Possible
Magnetic containers can be useful for freezing small amounts of food like leftovers. You can put them in small magnetic jars and stick them to the inside of the freezer.
Organizing your freezer will help you find anything you need easily. Instead of rummaging through stacks of boxes, you can see where you have kept that food packet and pull it out. It also prevents your food from getting spoilt as you will most likely use up everything before its expiry since you will be able to see everything and know each item’s expiry date. If you cannot fit all of your items in your freezer, you can opt for warehouse storage solutions like Fripp Warehousing. They offer cold storage warehouse services of different sizes where you can store your excess food and beverages.
