How do you organize your freezer?

[lavenderblue]

I actually have 3 freezers that all currently are used. Which when I think about it is ridiculous because there are only 3 of us. Anyway, I digress. How do you organize your freezer? I cleaned out my bottom freezer in my kitchen last night and it definitely needed it. It was stuffed to the gills and there was so much in there that I didn't even realize that I had. I'm hoping to do the garage freezer and chest freezer this weekend and I'm sure there will be even more found treasures. I'm thinking that the garage freezer will be the easiest because I'm just going to make that the snacks/goodies freezer, but I would really like to get better about organizing all three so that I don't end up throwing out a bunch of food that I forget about. I would also like to get better about shopping my own freezer before I go to the grocery store, because groceries are just so damn expensive. I'm not opposed to using bins or baskets or whatever to organize, I just don't know where to start. 

[mcppalmbeach]

Poorly so I’m following. We also have three. One in the house, a side by side a chest freezer in the garage. They are all three filled. The only thing I do to organize is I’m sure what most people do…inside freezer has stuff we are more likely to just grab for something quick (waffles and other breakfast items, frozen veggies, chicken nuggets and fries, meats we are likely to use for the week), outside side by side has any extras of the above and ice creams and snacks and chest freezer has meats.

[ssmjlm]

Hmm, I guess we also have 3 freezers.

Inside freezer - day to day stuff/baking needs
Ice packs for lunch boxes, butter sticks, cream cheese, ice cream, chicken nuggets, frozen bananas for muffins, maybe texas toast.

Garage fridge freezer - frozen pizzas, large ice packs, frozen pumpkin in the fall for pies/cheesecakes.

The main "food" freezer is our upright in the garage. That has the meat, bacon, sausage, freezer meals. Since it's upright we can see everything easily.

[mala]

Bold of you to assume it's organized. I only have the freezer on the fridge. Shit just gets shoved in there. I clean it out/purge every couple of years.

[cjcouple]

I have 2 freezers. One on top and one side by side.
The side by side is our extra
- Very bottom large poultry (chicken turkey) or a ham.
Next shelf extra meat and poultry packs
- next boxes like appetizers waffles pizza
- next veggies and fruit
- top ice creams/desserts (where I keep my ice cream maker bowl too.)

Upstairs main fridge is small as a top freezer

Bottom left is a few more veggies and fruit
bottom middle meats and poultry bottom right fries and nuggets

top left is ice bin, middle is opened ice cream ans top right is opened waffles ams bread bread sticks.

things obviously shift but generally this is what I aim for.

oh and the door downstairs is overflow.
upstairs is leftovers like bananas, half portions of beams and tomatoes that I use for soups and a couple beer mugs plus ice packs for lunches.

ETA: I admit I don't stock a ton. Simply because we don't use it quickly enough.
there is this store that sells bulk meat/chicken. They 40lb boxes and I jabe split a chicken breast with my In laws because whole we eat a lot of chicken, 40 lbs is too much. 20lbs was a lot!! haha.

[twinmomma]

The only way I could get my freezers organized would be to rehome my husband. He LOVES to shove leftovers in an unlabeled tupperware and chuck it in, only to be unearthed months later and thrown away because it's unlabeled and we have food allergies in our house, so we don't know who it's safe for. But, he's actually a chef for a living and keeps us all fed, so I try to just bite my tongue.

It does feel impossible to organize the bottom drawer style freezer. There's just no way to stack and sort effectively that I've found. The best we've done is frozen fruit for smoothies, popsicles, and breakfast items on the top tiny drawer and everything else on the bottom.

[litebright]

Our chest freezer has definitely fallen into disorganization, but I TRY to:

1) Keep items in the freezer in different colored reusable bags (red for meat, green for frozen fruit/smoothie stuff, etc.). That keeps things together in groups so that one package of chicken doesn't fall to the bottom and I think I have none. I keep the frozen treats that DH and the kids dip into frequently, on top because that stuff gets accessed most.

2) I have a small white board and marker attached to the top lid with a list of the items in the freezer. Of course mine is about two years+ out of date, but ... it's there!

This reminds me that I really need to clear out that freezer and reorganize it!

ETA: The drawer freezer upstairs that is part of our fridge keeps the stuff that gets used the fastest -- pizza rolls, veggies, frozen fish food, DH's fancy huge ice cubes that he makes for his old-fashioneds, etc. Plus all of our various hard & soft ice packs for lunches, coolers, back pain, headaches, and so on.

[deadwing]

I think the shape of your freezer is very relevant to this conversation. A chest freezer or drawer-style freezer are impossible to organize, IMO.

I have a four-door fridge, so I have two small side-by-side freezers on the bottom. All shelves/drawers fully pull out so it's quite easy to see what I have, even if it's not stashed neatly. I can pull it out and have a quick rummage. I also have a small upright freezer (it's the size of a mini fridge). That one is harder to keep on top of because it's always full and the shelves don't pull out.

[bex1973]

Ugg, not well at all so maybe I'll get some tips here. We have 4 - an upright, a chest (which I hate and didn't want!!) one on kitchen fridge and then side by side in the garage. We don't keep much in the garage because once it gets too cold it stops working (which is weird because the fridge part is fine) so that's mainly ice packs.

A few things we've tried that actually worked but we're heathens and undo all our work by just throwing stuff in:
- For a bit we had the kitchen freezer (bottom drawer which is a stupid design but the fridge came w/house) stocked just with breakfast and lunch items.

- We get a pig and a cow so we put one in upright and the other in the chest

- Chest had like items in bags (bins/boxes took up too much room) - this worked especially well for the meat

Honestly H is the worst with this and he pulls the last few of things out of the box so then if you can tell what it is by the time you find it it's too old because the stuff falls to the bottom.

Every time we do a clean out I'm horrified at the amount of stuff we have to throw away

[tiki]

It's a drawer-style freezer in our fridge. Top drawer is desserts, quick-grab kid food, and ice packs. Bottom drawer is supposed to be vegetables / vegetarian on the left, meat on the right. But then things don't fit and they get shoved where they get shoved.

[Saudade]

Throw shit in and let the hunger games begin.

[mysteriouswife]

Why would anyone need three freezers? Sincerely asking. We have two fridges and it’s ridiculous. We got stuck with the garage fridge when we bought the house. We have zero plans to replace it or repair when it dies.

Back to the question. We only use the kitchen freezer for the most part. It is a shove it in and hope for the best. The outside freezer has pizza and a turkey. It may have some ice cream. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[shauni27]

I think it could be described as "chaos and mess." It is actually on my list this weekend to clean out the fridge and freezer.

[lavenderblue]

Oct 25, 2024 7:54:14 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Why would anyone need three freezers? Sincerely asking. We have two fridges and it’s ridiculous. We got stuck with the garage fridge when we bought the house. We have zero plans to replace it or repair when it dies.

Originally it made sense when there were 6 of us, but now it's mostly overkill. I also have a history of food insecurity so tend to always have too much of everything in my house. I could get away with just the chest freezer and the freezer in my kitchen, but since I use the second fridge for things like drinks, protein shakes, extra eggs, etc I figured I'd take advantage of the freezer space as well. 

[shauni27]

Oct 25, 2024 7:54:14 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Why would anyone need three freezers? Sincerely asking. We have two fridges and it’s ridiculous. We got stuck with the garage fridge when we bought the house. We have zero plans to replace it or repair when it dies.

Back to the question. We only use the kitchen freezer for the most part. It is a shove it in and hope for the best. The outside freezer has pizza and a turkey. It may have some ice cream. 🤷🏻‍♀️

3 seems like a lot. We always grew up with the house freezer on the fridge and then a chest freezer because we farmed and raised our own meat. We would have to have a big chest freezer to keep a year's worth of beef, turkey, chicken and pork.

As an adult who does not raise my own meat, we have the one in our house and the extra in the garage from our old fridge--it is currently only filled with the compost before we can bring it to the public drop off space so it does not stink up our house, ha!

[arielroux]

Ehhhh, I don’t really know. We have a bottom drawer pull-out freezer in our refrigerator in the kitchen, so that’s our main one. We have the ice maker bin in the top drawer, plus all the small items and things we use frequently…ice cream bars, hash browns, breakfast burritos. In the deep bottom drawer, on the left side of the divider are things we have in freezer ziplock bags: leftover pizza, bagels. You’d be amazed at how many bagels we have because FI’s parents bring us bagels from NYC any time they go there, and bagels take up A LOT of space. On the right side of the bottom drawer divider are bags of frozen fruit, veggies, and meat.

Our garage freezer (which is a smaller standard freezer on top of our “beer fridge”) is a mish-mash of things we don’t use often: frozen leftover homemade soups, homemade spaghetti sauce, freeze pops, and things we probably should just trash at this point, but have forgotten we even have, so they continue to exist frozen for all time.

[eb777888]

Oct 25, 2024 7:40:52 GMT -5 Saudade said:

Throw shit in and let the hunger games begin.

lol, yes. I'm like....I organize it in a way that it will close?

[noodleoo]

Timely as H and I were just talking about getting a White board for our chest freezer to try to keep track of inventory.

Basically any time I make a grocery list H empties the whole thing to see if we have what I need. Ours is small tho, we mostly use it to stock up on meat on sale and a few frozen meal and dessert things we like from Costco. I think the more storage space you have, the more likely it is to lose stuff.

[sadlebred]

I'm with mala,except I clean it out about every 6 months (not clean as in scrubbing it--just trying to get rid of things I see that I don't need/won't use, etc.) The only thing that is organized is one shelf with 2 giant ice packs. The ice cream goes on that shelf in hopes they will survive a power outage.

[tacokick]

Honestly our fridge freezer is mostly ice cream and ice packs. It’s really small.

We have a small upright one in the basement and it’s largely frozen dumplings.


I used to try to freeze more but we’d forget about it. I might freeze a pound of meat or a couple of pork chops here or there but not often and I try to use them right away.

[ssmjlm]

Oct 25, 2024 7:54:14 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Why would anyone need three freezers? Sincerely asking. We have two fridges and it’s ridiculous. We got stuck with the garage fridge when we bought the house. We have zero plans to replace it or repair when it dies.

Back to the question. We only use the kitchen freezer for the most part. It is a shove it in and hope for the best. The outside freezer has pizza and a turkey. It may have some ice cream. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The fridge in the kitchen is counter depth and you can't fit a pizza box in there. So we like having a fridge in the garage for beer/soda and overflow.

[rhian]

We just have a drawer freezer below our fridge which is organized for food safety. The bottom part is deep but has a divider. On one side is raw meat, on the other is meal type frozen products that get cooked (chicken fingers, dumplings, etc). The top drawer we use mostly for frozen things that are more ready to eat. Right now it's about half breastmilk. Ice cream and frozen fruit goes there. When I make batches of things that just need to be microwaved quickly, like muffins, waffles, or pancakes, they go there.

[bex1973]

Oct 25, 2024 7:54:14 GMT -5 mysteriouswife said:

Why would anyone need three freezers? Sincerely asking. We have two fridges and it’s ridiculous. We got stuck with the garage fridge when we bought the house. We have zero plans to replace it or repair when it dies.

Back to the question. We only use the kitchen freezer for the most part. It is a shove it in and hope for the best. The outside freezer has pizza and a turkey. It may have some ice cream. 🤷🏻‍♀️

For us it's because we get either a half or whole pig and a half a cow each year and we also put up a lot of stuff from our garden and local farmers market so we can have it all winter. I also like to stock up on items that we use regularly and I feel comfortable that we'll use.

[HRH Queen Dick I]

Nobody needs 3 freezers unless you're planning to hunt Dasher Dancer Prancer and Vixen.

[lindyanne]

Kitchen freezer drawer - not much organization, frequently have to rummage for stuff. I did clean it out and organize it a bit a few months ago into categories like below but that didn’t last long. It is always pretty stuffed.
Upright freezer - I have bins for all the shelves. They’re divided into bigger categories. Chicken, ground chicken/turkey, ground beef/taco meat, bread, ‘leftover’ meat - DH smokes so we frequently have brisket, pulled pork, cooked chicken left), fruit, veggies. We have magnetic white boards on it that have been VERY helpful in keeping organized and knowing when we need to stock up on something again.

[Jalapeñomel]

Oct 25, 2024 9:13:38 GMT -5 HRH Queen Dick I said:

Nobody needs 3 freezers unless you're planning to hunt Dasher Dancer Prancer and Vixen.

I stopped reading after 3 posters said they have three freezers.   

[HRH Queen Dick I]

Oct 25, 2024 9:32:29 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Oct 25, 2024 9:13:38 GMT -5 HRH Queen Dick I said:

Nobody needs 3 freezers unless you're planning to hunt Dasher Dancer Prancer and Vixen.

I stopped reading after 3 posters said they have three freezers.   

I just corrected my typo in the quote. It's good to be the King.

[Covergirl82]

Not well, so I am here for tips/best practices. We also have 3 freezers - one in the house (freezer drawer below the fridge), and two in the garage (fridge/freezer combo where the freezer is on top (door) and a deep freezer (stand-up model)). The deep freeze is where we keep the venison hamburger, sausages, etc., any other frozen meat, and pizzas. The other two freezers have roughly the same things (frozen entrees, chicken tenders/nuggets, frozen veggies), but not organized well.

[definitelyO]

we have the pull out drawer freezer in the kitchen - it has a top shelf with 2 sections and a bottom with 2 "bins"

this is "generally" how it's organized - but it's all just tossed in there so isn't neat.

top left - ice cream and frozen snacks
top right - frozen fruit, chicken tenders, frozen snacks
bottom left - chicken, shrimp, burgers (a few packs of each - the overflow is in the basement freezer)
bottom right - veggies, potatoes, etc...

Basement freezer - extra of anything in the main freezer and also right now I think it has a turkey in there from almost a year ago
homemade pasta/pizza sauce - frozen flat and then I put in a bin.
ice packs

[dexteroni]

We have two small freezers. The basement fridge has a top freezer that’s only used for party foods like frozen appetizers, and DH’s Lean Cuisines that he eats for lunch. So that’s easy to organize because it’s all just stacked boxes, and any bagged items go on the door.

The freezer in our kitchen is the bottom drawer type and frankly it’s a pain in the ass to keep organized. The top drawer is ok because it’s shallow, but the bottom drawer is just so deep, it easily becomes a mess. I use four bins stacked two high to keep it somewhat organized, and big stuff goes in between the bins. It’s better than nothing, but it’s far from perfect. I hope someone comes up with a three drawer freezer by the time I need a fridge again.