Chest Freezer Tips?

[y4m]

I'm getting a chest freezer delivered today!  I'm mainly envisioning myself keeping stock and gluten-free baked stuff in there, and Costco/TJs favorites but probably that will expand...

Please share your best tips! What do you keep in it and how do you organize?

[lemons]

We have frozen veggies, ready to go crock pot meals, almond flour, buckwheat flour, coconut flour, ice cream, meats, etc.

I keep the flours in the bins that came with it. Meat is in one section, veggies in another, ice cream/etc is in another.

It's well organized until H decides he wants to see what all is in there, so who knows its current state :-) We don't have a large one so no food is getting lost in ours.

My mom has a large one and she puts small bags of veggies from their garden in paper sacks and then writes on the sack what is in the bag.

[ijack]

The one thing about chest freezers is that stuff can get lost pretty easily in there. If it doesn't have baskets I would get a few and label them by category. Also keeping a list of what is in there is helpful.
Most of what I kept in there was meat. I would buy a ton at costco and then package it into meal sizes and marinate it.
Also ice cream

[takeonyou]

I keep lots of frozen dinners and individual packages of meat in there. I also store extras of the big pots of soup I make. I bought bins that fit in there nicely. Rubbermaid type. All soups in one, chicken another, beef in another, veggies in the baskets on too, frozen dinners stacked on the one side, etc.

My best piece of advice: Get a dollar dry erase board with the magnetic back and stick it to the lid or side. Write a list of what foods you have in there. Its like keeping an inventory but much better than digging around or having 5 lasagnas in there.

[pamela]

Ours is mostly full of cow. It is easy to lose things in there so baskets to corral smaller items is definitely helpful. Ours has dividers that roughly divide the bottom into 5 sections. In those sections we have dog food, ground beef, roasts, steaks, and misc (bagged ice, rolls, bones for stock, etc). Then we have 2 baskets where I keep cheese, sausage, stock, extra veggies, etc.

One trick is to make sure it stays full. So when you're first getting started you may want to load it up with frozen water bottles/jugs/bags of ice and slowly replace them over time and you put food in. It's most efficient when full. Also helps it keep longer if the power does go out.

[takeonyou]

Nov 18, 2013 10:39:56 GMT -5 pamela said:

Ours is mostly full of cow. It is easy to lose things in there so baskets to corral smaller items is definitely helpful. Ours has dividers that roughly divide the bottom into 5 sections. In those sections we have dog food, ground beef, roasts, steaks, and misc (bagged ice, rolls, bones for stock, etc). Then we have 2 baskets where I keep cheese, sausage, stock, extra veggies, etc.

One trick is to make sure it stays full. So when you're first getting started you may want to load it up with frozen water bottles/jugs/bags of ice and slowly replace them over time and you put food in. It's most efficient when full. Also helps it keep longer if the power does go out.

Yes! I have four gallons of water frozen in there at all times. Its good for emergency situations as well.

[Deleted]

We keep frozen jugs in the bottom. They are great for power outages and just helping the freezer work less in general. We had a family member cut us a plastic piece to sit on top of them so it's still easy to stack stuff. ETA: You could also use one of those professional plastic cutting boards that they use in restaurants. They're cheap.

I bought a bunch of freezer containers on Amazon. I use them for as much stuff as possible because they stack so well. I use plastic crates for bagged stuff like frozen veggies. When I need to use freezer bags for something homemade I let them freeze on a cookie sheet first, all nice and flat, and then stack them in the freezer. (I froze some stuff in bags once but somehow got a hole in a bag and the shit went everywhere, so a cookie sheet contains stuff like that too.)

And definitely a dry erase board to keep inventory.

[dragonfly08]

I gave up on organizing. Something has to be at the bottom, right? What I found works best for me was just keeping it as neat as possible (I try to put bread on one side, seafood in this corner, smaller and frequently used items in the basket, etc.) and, most importantly, having an up to date list of exactly what was inside.

[rubytue]

I bought some baskets from the dollar store to help organize ours. But I need dividers and would like more of the baskets that rest on top.

Ours is about 50% bait and ice. Fishing season is about over so that should die down. Although good to know that leaving the ice blocks in there is good.

[Deleted]

The chest freezer is pretty much the home for convenient dinners and stuff from Costco. Ours is stocked with frozen tortellini, orange chicken, pizzas, bags of fruit and veggies, and things that I know I can grab and heat up for dinner without too much hassle.
We also started going to Costco once a month instead of every two weeks. This is helping us save money because we tend to throw extra stuff in the cart every time we go. For this reason we also have 5 gallons of milk, 4 loaves of bread, and all the other excess stuff that we will need later in the month but aren't ready for quite yet.
We have two baskets that hang on the top and we fill those with anything that isn't a box or doesn't have a flat bottom. all the other stuff is placed in the bottom like a game of tetris. Not great, but at least it is all in there. Every month when we go to Costco we move everything around, take stock of what we have, and reorganize it so that it doesn't look like a jumbled mess and we can access everything again.

[Deleted]

Nov 18, 2013 12:10:13 GMT -5 ribollita said:

We keep a list taped to the top and cross things off or add them as we go.

Yeah, I keep a general list of what's in there on my bulletin board in the kitchen. 

[arch01]

we have bins that separate all of our meat by type and a dry erase board for inventory. veggies, cheese and freezer meals surround the bins.