Keeping your fridge and freezer organised and at a cool temperature can help to prevent bacteria from contaminating your food and making you ill, as well as minimising your food wastage and grocery shopping bill. Follow these top fridge and freezer organisation tips below.
Shelf Order
- Store foods that do not need to be cooked on the upper shelves. E.g such as snacks, leftovers, pre-cooked and ready-to-eat items.
- Store any wrapped raw meat and fish on the bottom shelf. This is the coldest part of the fridge and will help to ensure freshness.
- Keep raw foods and cooked foods separate from each other. Having raw foods on the bottom shelf and cooked foods above will reduce the risk of cross-contamination. This is to avoid the raw foods falling or dripping on the cooked foods.
- Place a tray underneath the meat on the bottom shelf to help contain any potential leaks. It makes it easy to clean if there is spillage.
- Store eggs and dairy products, such as milk, cheese, yoghurt, and butter, on the middle shelves.
Fruit & Vegetables
Store vegetables, salads, fruit, and herbs in their original packaging in the fridge drawers to ensure they stay fresher for longer.- Keep vegetables and fruits in the separate designated drawers, if you have them – vegetable drawers are set for high humidity produce, whereas fruit drawers are set for low humidity produce, and fruits contain ethylene which can cause vegetables to spoil prematurely.
- Keep salads and herbs away from the back of the fridge where it is colder to prevent them from going off or getting frozen to the back of the fridge.
- Do not store avocados, nectarines, bananas, peaches, plums, pears, or tomatoes in the fridge as they are gas releasers which can make some vegetables go off prematurely.
Fridge Door
Store foods containing natural preservatives, such as condiments, jams, and fruit juice, in the fridge door shelves – the inside of the door is the warmest area of the fridge, this is most susceptible to fluctuations in temperature.- Put an empty egg carton in the bottom of your fridge door to neatly store condiments in, lid side down.
Other Fridge Tips
- Put containers in your fridge to house smaller items, foods that need to be kept separate from others, or potentially messy food items.
- Keep food that needs to be used sooner than others towards the front of the fridge or in a separate container designated for food that expires soon.
- Label butter, large yoghurts, condiments, fruit juices, and milk, with the date that you open them and the date that they need to be consumed by, as these items should be consumed within a certain amount of time after opening.
- Regularly organise the outside of your fridge too to make sure it looks as neat on the outside as it does on the inside, and make the room look less cluttered.
Freezer Tips
Put labels on your leftovers that go in the freezer, stating the date and what is inside the container. When you come back to it in a few months’ time, it may be difficult to identify what it is.- Keep a freezer inventory so that you always know what you have in there. This avoids you buying anything that you already have and do not need.
- Re-package and freeze foods in pre-portioned amounts in freezer bags and write on them what is in them, how much is in them, and the date.
- Take out the shelves in your freezer if it is small, as it may help you to fit more in.
- Take contents out of the boxes they come in and put them in freezer bags if they are not individually packaged. If there are cooking instructions that you need, cut them out and stick them on the container.
We hope these tips have given you some food for thought on how to keep your fridge and freezer well-organised and inspire you to get organised throughout your home.
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