How do you organize your freezer?

[heygrey]

I would break down the categories of things you're storing and designate a section for each. When the section is full, you have to eat down some of what you have before buying more. It makes it easier for a quick scan when you're making a meal plan or grocery list too.

We have a bottom drawer freezer in our kitchen and a small chest freezer in the garage. The kitchen freezer has two compartments on the bottom (1,2) and a shallower drawer at the top (3). Section 1 has cooked meat portioned and labeled (H has a smoker and will do big batch cooking then freeze in meal size portions). Section 2 has frozen veggies and fruit. Section 3 has ice packs and containers of sauces, soups, or one portion leftovers. I have Ball freezer containers that are 2 cup size and fit perfectly standing up in the shallow drawer.

The garage freezer has a big space below where we keep uncooked meat and baskets at the top that I can lift out. The baskets have popsicles (mostly in the summer) and overflow of frozen fruit and veg. I don't buy a lot of boxed items like frozen pizza, but I can store those on top of the meat if needed.

[gottadobe]

I am so glad I am not alone in having excess freezers.
I use milk crates in both the chest and garage stand up freezer.
Meats are sorted by type; beef, chicken, pork, etc.
Not perfect, but works for us. Esp in the chest freezer where we can just pull out a milk crate to get something underneath.
What I did learn last year is we are not "half a cow" people, we eat the same cuts over and over. No need for these gigantic roasts.

[lust2hart]

We have 2 freezers because my DH homebrews beer, so needed a second fridge for the kegs. That fridge downstairs is side by side and the freezer has 3 shelves and then a slide out bin in the bottom. I try to group like items per shelf - one shelf for chicken, one for pork/beef, one for stocks/soups, and then the bin has larger items, like a whole ham or a whole turkey.

I think for a chest freezer, I would need compartments so that I could do something similar. I would probably consider adding some sort of false bottom to the chest freezer, too, to limit the amount of things I can put in it. Or another way to accomplish this would be to have shorter vs. taller bins, but I like the idea of a false bottom so I wouldn't have to bend down so far.

Our upstairs fridge is the traditional freezer on top, fridge on bottom. I try to keep that only about halfway full, and I put shorter-term items there - things like bags of frozen veggies, or a frozen pizza/meal, that I bought specifically to use that week. I'll also use that for smaller quantities, or, for example - Our grocery store rarely has ground beef in 1-pound packages. So I buy the 2-pound package, use half, and put the other half in the upstairs freezer. I check that freezer first, to see what we have in terms of "leftovers," before opening a new package from downstairs.

[dexteroni]

Oct 25, 2024 11:03:43 GMT -5 heygrey said:

I would break down the categories of things you're storing and designate a section for each. When the section is full, you have to eat down some of what you have before buying more.

Agree. My four freezer bins are designated for meat, fish, veg, and one misc. it helps me not buy too much in any one category.

Also lavenderblue if you’re filling three freezers, it’s probably time to take a hard look at the quantities you buy. I get that it’s nice to stock up on sale items, but that’s so much food for three people. Reducing your overbuying will help as much as organizing bins will.

[livinitup]

I do all the things. The only thing that actually works to keep it organized (I have 2 refrigerators with bottoms freezers) is to freeze less stuff. A lot less stuff.

Also, less stuff.

[sdlaura]

We have two freezers for 6 people. Inside one is a side by side so nearly nothing fits. We keep stuff we use more day to day there. Then most everything is in the garage freezer.

[lavenderblue]

Oct 25, 2024 11:24:24 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Oct 25, 2024 11:03:43 GMT -5 heygrey said:

I would break down the categories of things you're storing and designate a section for each. When the section is full, you have to eat down some of what you have before buying more.

Agree. My four freezer bins are designated for meat, fish, veg, and one misc. it helps me not buy too much in any one category.

Also lavenderblue if you’re filling three freezers, it’s probably time to take a hard look at the quantities you buy. I get that it’s nice to stock up on sale items, but that’s so much food for three people. Reducing your overbuying will help as much as organizing bins will.

I am definitely not filling all 3. The upstairs freezer was definitely overfilled, but I cleaned it out and semi-organized it last night. The garage top freezer actually currently has nothing in it. The only time the chest freezer is full is when I make a big Costco run and stock up on things like frozen pizzas, premade dinners, etc. I definitely have too much of some things, but really my main issue is just having no organization and things get lost to the bottom of the abyss and don't end up getting used. I want to be able to buy things and stock up when they are on sale, but not at the risk of losing them in the freezer and they never get used and I just end up buying more which is so wasteful. 

[lust2hart]

Oct 25, 2024 11:34:42 GMT -5 lavenderblue said:

Oct 25, 2024 11:24:24 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Agree. My four freezer bins are designated for meat, fish, veg, and one misc. it helps me not buy too much in any one category.

Also lavenderblue if you’re filling three freezers, it’s probably time to take a hard look at the quantities you buy. I get that it’s nice to stock up on sale items, but that’s so much food for three people. Reducing your overbuying will help as much as organizing bins will.

I am definitely not filling all 3. The upstairs freezer was definitely overfilled, but I cleaned it out and semi-organized it last night. The garage top freezer actually currently has nothing in it. The only time the chest freezer is full is when I make a big Costco run and stock up on things like frozen pizzas, premade dinners, etc. I definitely have too much of some things, but really my main issue is just having no organization and things get lost to the bottom of the abyss and don't end up getting used. I want to be able to buy things and stock up when they are on sale, but not at the risk of losing them in the freezer and they never get used and I just end up buying more which is so wasteful. 

What I find most useful is meal planning, which includes me looking through the freezer and then planning my weekly menu around what I already have. 

[dragon's breath]

My big freezer died two days before I was supposed to fill it with half a cow. Small town, no uprights big enough, so had to buy two chest freezers to fit the meat. On top of the little chest freezer I've had >20 years.

Because I now have two decent sized chest freezers, I needed to get better organization.

I use wire baskets in one of them-- they stack well, hold smaller items easily so they don't get lost. The other one is all beef, so I have a cardboard box that fits the 1 lb ground beef perfectly, plus some other cardboard boxes to keep stuff from shifting. I'll convert this to baskets as well as it gets cleaned out.

I have a magnetic whiteboard on both of them that I keep updated. I list the food and use hashmarks (but just the lines, no group of five slash). As we remove an item, it's easy to wipe off one of the marks with our fingers.

This has worked pretty well. Large stuff on the bottom, the stuff we use most often near the top.

[lavenderblue]

Oct 25, 2024 11:40:35 GMT -5 lust2hart said:

Oct 25, 2024 11:34:42 GMT -5 lavenderblue said:

I am definitely not filling all 3. The upstairs freezer was definitely overfilled, but I cleaned it out and semi-organized it last night. The garage top freezer actually currently has nothing in it. The only time the chest freezer is full is when I make a big Costco run and stock up on things like frozen pizzas, premade dinners, etc. I definitely have too much of some things, but really my main issue is just having no organization and things get lost to the bottom of the abyss and don't end up getting used. I want to be able to buy things and stock up when they are on sale, but not at the risk of losing them in the freezer and they never get used and I just end up buying more which is so wasteful. 

What I find most useful is meal planning, which includes me looking through the freezer and then planning my weekly menu around what I already have. 

For sure! I've just started being more consistent with that and this week I "shopped" my freezer before making my grocery order. We eat meat for dinner every night and I only had to buy meat for 2 nights (and one of those was a whole chicken that I'll be using the leftovers for a different night), so I'm calling that a win for me

[lavenderblue]

Oct 25, 2024 11:18:18 GMT -5 lust2hart said:

We have 2 freezers because my DH homebrews beer, so needed a second fridge for the kegs. That fridge downstairs is side by side and the freezer has 3 shelves and then a slide out bin in the bottom. I try to group like items per shelf - one shelf for chicken, one for pork/beef, one for stocks/soups, and then the bin has larger items, like a whole ham or a whole turkey.

I think for a chest freezer, I would need compartments so that I could do something similar. I would probably consider adding some sort of false bottom to the chest freezer, too, to limit the amount of things I can put in it. Or another way to accomplish this would be to have shorter vs. taller bins, but I like the idea of a false bottom so I wouldn't have to bend down so far.

Our upstairs fridge is the traditional freezer on top, fridge on bottom. I try to keep that only about halfway full, and I put shorter-term items there - things like bags of frozen veggies, or a frozen pizza/meal, that I bought specifically to use that week. I'll also use that for smaller quantities, or, for example - Our grocery store rarely has ground beef in 1-pound packages. So I buy the 2-pound package, use half, and put the other half in the upstairs freezer. I check that freezer first, to see what we have in terms of "leftovers," before opening a new package from downstairs.

This is brilliant and I think that I'm going to do this. I can't reach the bottom anyway which is part of why so much goes unused. This paired with better organizing will hopeful help. 

[doctoranda]

Two freezer household here. Inside freezer has things we use a lot like bread, meat replacements, ice and some frozen veggies. These are in different compartments. Garage freezer has steaks, crab, salmon, bagels, butter -- in general things we eat or need less. We have a white board on the garage one with different sections representing the drawers in the freezer and we write on it what is in the drawers and erase when out of it.

[mrsukyankee]

I only have the bottom drawers of our fridge freezer. We keep a list of veg (top drawer) because my MIL will keep buying and buying stuff as she's not willing to dig to look for things. Our bottom left is meat/fish and our bottom right is bread stuff. We constantly check on the meat/fish side to make sure we keep using items. If it was bigger, we'd definitely keep a list for everything.

[arehopsveggies]

Inside freezer- things we are actively using ,
Like an open box of waffles, dinner planned for that week, etc

Large freezer- really just meat. We don’t hunt, but my grandpa does and will often give us large quantities, or if we split a cow or pig with my parents.

Freezer above the drink/garage fridge- I don’t trust this one for meat, so it’s mostly just extra waffles, a frozen pizza or two, etc.