An organized home is the key to a healthy lifestyle. Nothing can beat the comfort of finding what you are looking for in the right place without getting interrupted by excess items. Such a living space gives ease to your everyday life and reduces the stress and anxiety caused by messiness. Like your bathrooms, dressing rooms, and cabinets, refrigerator organizing is a big part of the overall order of the house.
On top of all the benefits mentioned earlier, refrigerator organizing can contribute to the household budget and family health. Think about a fridge packed to the brim with bags, bottles, and jars of food tossed in it. Rot and mold may likely go unnoticed. To keep in mind, spoiled food can spoil fresh food very quickly. In such a situation, someone can eat bad food haphazardly, which creates risks for family health. On top of that, spoiled food is wasted and causes the household budget a burden. Keeping the refrigerator organized helps avoid these downsides.
How to start refrigerator organizing?
To start organizing your fridge from scratch, first, empty it. This way, it will become easier to detect old, rotten, spoiled food. Throw away all of them. Before placing them, you have to sort out them according to their types. Fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, bottled condiments should be separated.
For a fresh start, clean up your fridge before placing anything. It would be easier to do it while it is empty. Washing crispers is crucial to get rid of any remnants of mold from old food. You may also want to wash or wipe the shelves.
Get to Know Your Refrigerator
While reorganizing your fridge, you may want to learn more about how the fridge works to keep up with an efficient strategy.
Doors
Doors are the warmest areas of the refrigerator. So, it is better to keep items that do not need to be very cold such as juice and condiments.
Top shelves
The top shelves of a fridge can be warmer than the bottom parts. Because of that, consider placing left-overs, ready-meals, bread, or drinks up there.
Bottom Shelves
In contrast to other parts, the bottom of a fridge tends to be the cooler area that is for meat, eggs, or any other raw food. Tip: Remember that the back part of the shelf is always the coldest.
Refrigerator Organizing Tips
1. Remove packaging
All kinds of packaging and bags do not look uniformly organized, do they? The essential step is getting rid of them when indexing your fridge. Removing packaging can also benefit you in terms of space. Try unpacking vegetables and fruits; since bags don’t show inside, many items go unnoticed, and you buy them once again in your next shopping.
2. Use Refrigerator Organizing Bins
The best way to keep your fridge organized is to use organizing bins to divide your shelves for similar items. Group everything in the refrigerator and find bins that can be suitable for them. Once you have a place for any type of item, it will never be thrown in. Here are some ideas for using organizing bins.
Soda Dispenser Bins:
These carry up to 10 cans of soda, and if you like to stack up packs of soda, they may be suitable for your fridge. Using a dispenser bin saves you a lot of space than just piling up six-packs.
Drawer Bins:
These open bins are like drawers in your fridge. They can be pulled out; you don’t need to move everything to reach for that jar squeezed at the back. That’s great! You can store fruits, vegetables, or packed food like greek yogurt and condiments in them.
Glass Containers:
For a healthy refrigerator, you may want to get glass containers. For storing leftovers, fruits like strawberry and blueberry, or any kind of unpacked food, they are the healthiest option. Since they are transparent, it is easier to keep them organized and track of ailments. And if you don’t like to invest that much in them, you can still use old glass jars. That is still perfectly fine!
Lazy Susan:
This is such a great invention! A turntable, lazy susan saves lots of room and time because items do not get lost in the razzle-dazzle of the shelves. Place one (or two) lazy susan in the fridge to corral all the small jars of jams and sauces.
Washable Shelf Mats:
A vital part of a healthy and organized refrigerator is maintaining its cleanliness. Trying to clean leakages, stains, and oddments on shelves may be frustrating. Instead of emptying the fridge every cleaning day, you can just switch to washable shelf liners. This will change your refrigerator organizing game forever!
Wire / Straw Baskets:
You may not like plastic containers or just want your refrigerator to look smart as well. Then, you can include wire and /or straw baskets in the game! They are suitable for storing vegetables and fruits, and they look so cool.
3. Label your items
You organized your aliments with containers, bins, and baskets. That is really good, but you can elevate refrigerator organizing by labeling. Label your containers to highlight what is inside and when it expires. This will assist you in controlling what is going on in the fridge.
4. Separate vegetables & fruits
While reorganizing your fridge, make sure you reserve separate crispers or bins for vegetables and fruits. This is extremely important because certain fruits diffuse a type of natural gas that quickens ripening and may cause vegetables to spoil.
5. Do not overfill
Maintaining the system is as essential as creating it. To keep up with your refrigerator organizing, try not to fill your fridge chock full. As you buy more items, you’ll have less space to put them. Consequently, you start to stack jars, packs, and bags on top of each other. There is no need for that. Use the organization system to follow up on your needs and try to buy as required.