A disorganized fridge can quickly become a big problem. A messy fridge can definitely threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The excellent news is that you can, with no trouble, prevent these risks by using one or a few simple organizational strategies. Keeping your fridge organized makes the most of your available space and keeps everything fresh and ready to eat.
Clean and Sort
The first step to organizing a fridge is cleaning and sorting all your items. Properly pull everything out of the refrigerator, checking for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Clear away anything that is past the expiration date or looks dreadful. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not really sure how long it has been in there, throw it out. relating to your food, it’s more advisable to err on the side of caution.
With everything out of the fridge, make sure to clean its interiors thoroughly. Wash and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins, applying hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. In this manner, you will set off with a clean fridge for your new organization system.
Label Everything
The next step to an organized fridge is to keep an inventory of how long your food has been there. Even though a good deal of pre-packaged foods will come with an expiration or sell-by date on them, for fruits and veggies or food that you bring home or that is leftover from meals, you’ll have to create a system to keep track of when it was added to the fridge and when it will need to be thrown out.
One appropriate way is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could do the same thing for other perishables inside of your fridge. By noting both when you brought them home and when they need to be used, you can always make certain that you are using up the groceries you buy before they spoil and avoid eating leftovers that can make you sick.
Use Containers
Keeping loose items tidy in a fridge, such as fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be tough to do. Contemplate using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and see to it you have everything you’want. Likewise, look at obtaining quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers again and again.
You can additionally use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were purchased. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of perishable items simple and trouble-free.
Develop a System
As you get started with replacing items, it’s weighty to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will certainly always know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. Like, for instance, know that certain items should always be kept in certain places.
Meat should constantly be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. Not only that, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil swiftly when exposed to warm air incessantly. You can, moreover, separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for messy items to effectivel prevent spills.
Plan Ahead
If and when your fridge is clean and organized, the most important thing you can do is to plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be properly cleaned, and old items thrown out once in a while. Think about creating a cleaning schedule to certainly make sure that your fridge stays organized. For illustration, you could choose a day of the week or month for you to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By doing this at regular times, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few find pleasure in.
By observing these practical tips, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less struggle than you thought at all possible!
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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021
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