If properly arranged, your freezer can be a useful tool. You can extend the life of peak-season food, store up on meat and fish, and delegate large-batch cooking to days when you have time, enjoying the benefits on busy weeknights, by leveraging its power. When you’re not on your game, however, your freezer may soon turn into a jumbled wasteland of frosty mystery meals, a stopover for leftovers on their route to the garbage. When you lose control of what’s going on inside your cold storage, it quickly transforms from a benefit to a liability.
Your best chance is to maintain a constant eye on your freezer—to “remain ready so you don’t have to get ready,” as they say. It takes a lot less effort than you may think: all you need is a little forethought and a few well-chosen goods to set up an easy-to-maintain organised system. Here are some tips and techniques to help you get your freezer in tip-top form and keep it that way so you don’t have to spend an hour deep-cleaning it ever again.
Know thyself
Nobody can tell you how to prioritise the contents of your freezer; what matters most to you is part of a highly personal hierarchy. For others, frozen veggie bags are the most frequently reached-for item, whereas others rely on leftovers for busy weeknights. Pay attention to your individual desires and demands while setting up your freezer: Short-term tenants in front are the most generally used or need-to-be-used as soon as possible.
If you have a habit of forgetting what’s in your freezer (or fridge), stick a notepad on the front to keep track of what’s inside. You’ll reduce food waste, shop less frequently, and always have somewhere to scribble down to-do lists.
Go vertical
In terms of instant organisation and long-term tidiness, storing things upright in your freezer makes a tremendous impact. You’ve probably heard about storing leftover soups or stews on their sides in large zip-top bags so you can quickly flip through them to see what you have and draw out what you need without breaking the stack. Nonliquid freezables, such as ready-to-blend smoothie packets, can be bagged in the same way.
Vertical storage is the way to go for boxed frozen items like toaster waffles. When you line your boxes up on their sides, you won’t have to worry about a frozen food avalanche if you remove one, and you’ll always have room for the next item you take home from the grocery store.
Zones and bins
Separating your freezer space into various zones for different sorts of food and using freezer organizer bins Malaysia to corral like products is the best method to preserve freezer order for the long haul. The same baskets and containers that keep your fridge organised can be used to organise your freezer, with sections for desserts, vegetables, protein, and more.
Use the space inside the door of reach-in freezers by adding slim bins, which are better fitted to accommodate bags of frozen bits and bobs than the shelf alone. Use bins to divide the space in a chest freezer, but keep in mind that depth is important. Keeping a broad, flat container roughly half the width of your freezer on top of everything else adds another layer of storage that you can move easily to one side or the other to access the contents underneath.
