My Best Tips for Organizing a Freezer
A couple of months ago I got an additional freezer, and it has been a lifesaver.
Today, I want you to join me on my quest of organizing both my freezers and meal planning to clean them out. Organizing a freezer may seem like a daunting task, but it is actually really satisfying, so let’s get started!
My new chest freezer is seven cubic feet, and it has allowed me to stock up on a lot of things while they were on sale. This means that it is not organized at all right now.
We have our butter, some random things, flour, lots of bread, vegetables and meat. I am planning to organize this freezer and transfer some of the other freezer contents here as well.
To help me with my organizing, I bought this set of bins from Amazon.
They are stackable, which is great for optimizing space. Keep in mind however that when you stack them they do lose a little bit in height, so do not fill them up to the top.
They also have handles, which means I can easily pull them out anytime I want to. All this makes them the perfect chest freezer organizers.
First, I want to take everything out and then organize it and then put it in the bins. Here is everything except for the butter that was in the freezer – cheese, veggies, potatoes, mainly just bread in the middle section, and then pizzas, pizza crust and then some tortillas.
We have some Go-Gurts, flour and meat. I have four bins, so I am thinking of having one or two meat bins, having bread in the middle or on the side on a little shelf, and then putting veggies and cheese in another bin.
When sorting the items, I try to keep in mind what we use more and therefore will reach for more often. For this reason, the veggies are going to be more readily accessible than the cheese.
Moreover, I am planning to use our main freezer for all the foods that we use quite regularly and need to keep close, whereas this one will be for the things we buy in bulk and all the extras.
Hopefully, this separation will allow this freezer to stay more organized and make it easier to find things, as it is sometimes an issue.
This is what our main freezer looks like right now.
It is pretty packed and I have not gone through it in a while, so today I want to reorganize it. I'm going to move some of the stuff to the second freezer, and definitely get rid of some things that have freezer burn, as some of my foods have been sitting here for a while.
Let’s get cleaning!
We had a lot more in that freezer than I realized. I have taken everything out, transferred all the extra cheeses and sausages to the big freezer, organized everything into bins and put it back in. The freezer looks so much better now!
On the upper shelf, we have our chicken nuggets in the front, and some of our bread in a bin in the back. Turns out that the bins are the perfect height for loaves of bread, which is an awesome surprise!
I have divided my bread between the two freezers. The veggies are down the middle, and there is another bin for chicken, and some celery as well.
I am keeping the foods that I have plans for in the upcoming days in the front for easy access. This includes naans, which I am planning on using for either making some curry or mini pizzas pretty soon, and sweet pork and ham, which I am hoping to use in the next week.
Going down to the lower shelf, there is a bin for meatballs and sausages which we use pretty often for dinner. Down the middle, we have some beans, spaghetti sauce, and then guacamole, which if you did not know, you can totally freeze.
The bin in the back holds all of our ground beef, and we definitely have a lot of that, probably six or seven pounds in there.
I did not bother reorganizing the door, as it looked more or less okay to me. We have some frozen fruits and veggies here, a ton of pizza crust, some biscuits, and then some breakfast sausage for my husband. This is basically our breakfast area, providing a great variety of options such as smoothies or breakfast meats. With this, my freezer organization is done, and they both look so great!
Now that I know exactly what I have in my freezer, I have written up some ideas for what to make based on those ingredients. Here are a few dinner ideas that I thought of using the things that are in the freezer. We could do a wide variety of pasta recipes with just what we have in the freezers and already on hand in the pantry, such as pasta with chicken, ground beef, or sausage.
We can make our breakfast hash, breakfast casserole, beef and broccoli, Thai peanut beef, Korean beef bowls, teriyaki meatballs. Italian chicken or pesto chicken are both really good crockpot meals that we like. We could also make lasagna, taco casserole, pork and potato casserole, and sausage and veggies.
I am sure there are plenty of other ideas available with all the abundance that we have accumulated, but these are just what I came up with in a couple of minutes.
I am very excited to know that we have so much in the freezers that we can use to make meals for the next few weeks for my family. I will put this list on the fridge so that next time I am cooking dinner I already know what to make.
Organizing a freezer
When did you last organize your freezer? Is there a system you use? Let me know if you have any tips you are willing to share!
Next, check out these 7 Easy and Delicious Pantry Clean Out Meals.
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