Home Organization Series: The Refrigerator

How often do you clean your refrigerator? I feel like I am always cleaning mine. And yet, it never felt organized-clean. The only reason it would look clean, is because I threw a ton of food away. That’s another thing; I hate throwing food away. It makes me feel guilty and terrible. I knew it was time to make a change, so I went to my trusty source for all ideas…Pinterest! So many of the refrigerator organization ideas (only produce and sparkling beverages) were beautiful and at the same time not applicable to my life with two young kids.

I ended up focusing on what I wanted for us as a family: healthy food that can be accessed as easily as the non-healthy food. Do I choose a protein bar over salad because the bar is easier to grab and eat vs. salad prep? Yup, usually the case. But what if…salad prep was done and equally easy to a protein bar? (By the way, not knocking protein bars…trying to incorporate more greens into my life).

Here are my five favorite tools and ways to organize. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a commission at no additional cost to you (helps keep things running over here).

Lazy Susan

I have Lazy Susans hidden everywhere in my house: under sinks, in cabinets and in my refrigerator. They are awesome for storing all the things you use daily for easy access. I have this one in my refrigerator. I love the size of the lip around it, catches anything that may spill and allows for east cleaning.

And this one is in my cabinet. This one linked here is under my sink for cleaning supplies.

Bins

Having various sized bins is great in the refrigerator for two reasons: it keeps things organized in groups AND helps you keep the larger surfaces of the the fridge clean. Bonus: if you have kids they know where everything is when they are looking for the millionth snack any given day.

I love these bins, they are clear (come in white and smoke too) and easy to label, come in various sizes and are cost-effective when you buy in bulk (case of 12).

I used these pullout style bins for our bread and egg whites. And these handled ones for drinks and produce.

Glass Containers

My husband wraps leftover pizza in foil sticks it in a plastic bag and it pretty much goes in the fridge to die. Our old way of storing leftovers was a sure way to throw them out. I never knew what we had in the fridge. I used air-tight glass containers to house our leftovers and store prepped fruits and veggies. Now that I can actually see what we have in the refrigerator, food gets eaten and tossed out less. I bought ours at Costco, if you aren’t close to one you can order these.

Salad and Egg Keepers

By show of hands, who here tosses out a bag of spring mix every week? If you asked me a couple of weeks ago, both of my arms would be in the air. That’s why I bought this salad keeper, it uses carbon packets to keep the produce fresh. Now I have washed and ready salad that will hopefully stay fresh longer.

We buy our eggs in bulk and I hard boil half of them. I was keeping them in the original container (separated). After a couple of times where someone grabbed a hardboiled egg only to be surprised that it wasn’t…I got these containers to really keep them separate.

Labeler

I bought this labeler and thought maybe I’ll use it…oh gosh do I ever! I LOVE this thing. By the way, I have a vinyl cutter but I prefer the labeler for this project as I can quickly produce labels with expiration dates and other notes.

Other Tips

Group items according to whatever makes sense to you. I have our proteins together, produce, snacks
Look outside the pre-labeled box (or drawer). I put our salsas and sauces inside what was intended to be a produce drawer. It helped us to see our produce in the open to minimize waste.
Make a kid-friendly area. The bottom drawer has a lot of the kids’ snacks: yogurt tubes, cheese sticks, etc. Also have the fruit at eye level so they can help themselves to healthy options.
Mason jars make for great storage (house juice, cut veggies, fruit, etc.).