Organizing Your Home: the freezer

So far in this series, we've looked at how I organize my pantry and my refrigerator. Have you been able to organize your pantry and refrigerator over the past two weeks?

This week, we'll look at how I organize my freezer. Like I mentioned at the end of last week, my freezer is often too full for me to even do any baking! I like to make and freeze a batch of muffins for easy breakfast meals.

My chock-full freezer last week

We rent a condo now, so we have a smaller-than-average refrigerator with a top freezer. We don't have a separate freezer because there simply isn't room here. This has all been a challenge for me, to say the least! I don't do "freezer cooking," per se, but I do utilize my freezer regularly (for example, muffins and other bread items). We also shop less often since we live in a rural area, so I stock up on groceries about two times per month.

However, I will not be defeated by my freezer! Here's a few tips for keeping your freezer organized:

Group like items together. I tend to keep certain food items together: bread, meat, cheese, vegetables, etc. When I'm looking for a particular item, I usually know in what general area to look in the freezer. Commonly heard in our home:

My husband: "Ummm...I know I have bread in here. Any idea where it is?"
Me: "Please stop taking everything out! It should be on the top shelf in the back right corner. I think."

75% of the time, I'm right. The other 25% of the time? You'll find me emptying the contents of our freezer onto the counter as I search frantically for the bread. Yeah, it's fun.

Unfortunately, I just haven't found a way to eliminate this problem in our current freezer. When we moved in, it didn't even have any shelves! That was bad. We put some wire shelves in there, but my best approach is still to group like items together.

My freezer this week...there's a little more space!

Use vacuum sealing to conserve space. As you can see in my pictures, I utilize my Food Saver vacuum sealing machine regularly (mine is very similar to this one). It definitely help conserve space! We received ours as a Christmas gift last year and have definitely seen the value in having it. I portion out our meat after I purchase it and seal it up before freezing it. I also vacuum seal veggies when I do those.

I keep smaller items in the freezer door.

Clean out the freezer regularly. Just like with the refrigerator, it's very important to clean out the freezer regularly. While I don't enjoy digging through my freezer regularly looking for items, it does help me keep it cleaned out!

Our freezer is definitely my nemesis when it comes to home organization - I'll be the first to admit that! However, my resolve to keep it organized has been energized, even when I don't want to do it (which is basically all the time!).

Take 15 minutes today to sort through the contents of your freezer. Should anything be thrown away or used soon? How can you better organize your freezer?