This is what our fridge currently looks like. It looks like or similar to this 90-95% of the time. Seriously, come over and take a look if you want! It's not a very large fridge although it's not tiny either, but I could definitely use at least a little bit more space. And yes, we have a lot of orange juice, cheese and yogourt. This is because I buy in sales cycles mainly for the Healthy Snack Fund at work. But enough about that, this post is about organization! Once upon a time, in a not-so-faraway land I had a more typical disorganized fridge. Sure the beverages were mostly on the upper shelves and meat was in the meat keeper but it was a disorganized mess! I threw out a lot of food - garbage bags full. Rotten fruits and vegetables, soured milk, mouldy cheese, stinky leftovers, you name it, it went in the garbage. I'd spend hundreds of dollars on groceries every month and throw most of it in the garbage. Why? Because my fridge was a mess! I couldn't easily see what I already had/what needed to be used up/that I already had two bottles of ketchup stuffed in the back of the fridge. Items were just tossed into the refrigerator wherever there was a spare inch or two to squeeze into. Then I got cheap, guilty ("There are children starving in Afrigina")... and smart and thought "Why am I wasting all this money on food I'm just going to end up throwing out?" So I dug into my natural 'OCD-ness' and changed. Every week when we come back from grocery shopping, I take maybe 5 minutes and clean out the fridge (wipe shelves quickly if needed and make sure I don't have any "questionables" in the fridge), before I put the groceries in it. This way I never have the dreaded clean-out-the-fridge task that can take hours (especially when it hasn't been done in who knows how long!). It takes me less than 5 minutes every week. The first time I did this it make me want to cook more. I opened the fridge and saw the lovely, bright, shiny and clean fridge with lots of fresh food inside and had the urge to really cook something nice. Try it! | I created what is essentially a constantly revolving (based on what we have in our fridge at any given time) designated shelving system:
What I don't have currently, but what I highly recommend everyone to have is a "leftovers" shelf or shelves. If you have a designated shelf JUST for leftovers, you are going to significantly reduce your food waste (only if you frequently have leftovers!). We don't have a lot of leftovers as we usually either put them in our lunches the next day or can/freeze them (things like soup, pasta, sauce, etc.). |
Obviously what works for our household isn't necessarily going to work for yours. You may need two shelves for condiments for example, only one for fruits and vegetables or whatever! You may find cleaning out the fridge before you go shopping or on another day entirely works better for you. The key to having an organized fridge is simply just having a "home" for everything in your fridge and making it easy for yourself to maintain it. I guarantee it will reduce your food waste!