Introduction
Your refrigerator may not be the heart of the kitchen, but it’s certainly a very important part of it. If you don’t keep your refrigerator maintained and properly organized, it may block airflow and cause other problems that may damage the appliance. If your refrigerator is broken, you can search for “refrigerator repair near me” and hire professionals to help you fix it. Let’s figure out how you can organize your refrigerator for your family.
The Details
- Bins and baskets – Sauces, pickle jars, condiments, spreads, relishes and all other types of such items often get lost deep inside the refrigerator without the help of JK Rowling. Since you can’t find them and can’t track them properly, you just end up buying more of them from the supermarket only to find out it was already there in the refrigerator. In a worse situation, you cook your food and after searching for an hour and finding the condiment, you find out it’s expired.
Unfortunately, condiments, sauces, and spreads aren’t the only items that get lost in the fridge. There are other small items that often get lost. Fortunately, you can prevent that with the help of bins and baskets. Get a bin or basket for a particular type of item and label it as such. For instance, if you have a sauce collection, label a basket as sauce and store all the sauces in that basket. If baskets and bins aren’t your things, you can also use a lazy susan and bring items from the back to the front by spinning that disk.
- Separate gassy veggies and fruits – From a young age, everyone is taught to keep fruits and veggies out of their wrapping or plastic pouch before putting them in the fridge. However, have you ever tried to figure out why you need to do that? The primary reason for this is ethylene. Certain fruits and veggies release ethylene gas that accelerates the ripening process. You need to separate those fruits and veggies from the regular non-gassy bunch to prevent them from rotting.
If you don’t indulge in bulk grocery purchases, this isn’t an issue since most of your gassy veggies and fruits would fit into one crisper drawer. However, if you buy large quantities of produce to save money, you need to put the gassy veggies and fruits like apples, melons, cabbage, and broccoli in the crisper drawers. Everything else can go into the middle shelf or any other part of the refrigerator apart from the freezer. Crisper drawers have dedicated climate control that’s independent of the refrigerator and can allow you to extract away that gas.
- Use deli containers and silicone containers – Deli containers are amazing. If you can save them and use them correctly, they can help you organize the refrigerator in the best way possible. Deli containers come in primarily two shapes, an elongated container, and a tumbler. These come in quart, pint, and other sizes and have the standard lid.
Moreover, deli containers are optimized to show what’s inside the container and are meant to be stacked on top of each other for efficient storage at the deli counter. When you use deli containers for storing food, you can get things done pretty quickly and don’t even have to worry about knocking down or spilling food. You can store everything from leftovers to planned meals in certain portions. When it’s time to eat, just bring them out, transfer them to a plate or bowl, and heat them up.
On the other hand, if you have cut fruits, salads, and cut veggies, it’s best to use a silicone container. They don’t react to the food and help with easy storage. You can buy both silicone containers and deli containers or simply keep those containers when you order food. Instead of ending up in a landfill, you can make better use of them for organizing your refrigerator and also help the environment.
- Get a “Consumption Priority” box – A consumption priority box is exactly what it says. You get a big glass or fiber box or bin and label it as “Consumption Priority”. You need to keep this box at eye level inside the refrigerator so that it’s the first thing that you notice as soon as you open the door. This box will contain everything that needs to be consumed quickly to prevent waste.
You can keep items that are about to expire or leftovers that need to be eaten before they go bad. As you take out an item from this box and finish consuming it, inspect your refrigerator for the next thing that should be on the priority list and transfer it to the box. This way you can keep tabs on things inside the refrigerator and minimize waste.
- Hang baskets – Hang baskets are nifty little accessories that can completely change how you store things in your refrigerator. They are cheap, abundant, and allow you to maximize the storage space in your fridge. You can stick them to the refrigerator walls and make use of that free space for storing small items.
For instance, you can store string cheese, pre-made lunch meat, or small cups of hummus in those hanging baskets. However, make sure that the hang baskets use suction instead of adhesives to stick to the wall and keep them away from the vents on the wall.
- Ring Clips – Ring clips are another amazing thing that can be attached to the shelf racks and hung from them. You can attach snack pouches or other lightweight items and use that upper part of the shelf as well. However, make sure to not go overboard and allow sufficient room for airflow.
Conclusion
As you can see, organizing your refrigerator isn’t a daunting task. Just keeping things in order at their designated space with the use of a few additional accessories gets the job done. On the other hand, if your refrigerator is broken, you can search for “refrigerator repair near me” and hire a technician to fix it for you.
