Do you feel like you can’t find anything in your freezer? Do you find yourself purchasing items you already had without realizing it until you were looking for something else … which went bad? In this blog and in the video below, I show you how to organize your freezer by creating zones so that everything is easy to find and put away. That way, you will save money by not purchasing duplicates and by using what you have before it expires.
I’m Terry Elisabeth, author of “How to Organize Any Space in 7 Simplified Steps” where I show you how to organize your spaces according to your personal organizing style so that your spaces can finally stay organized.
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The footage above is a freezer transformation for a family of five, including mom, dad, a son in middle school, and two daughters in elementary school. I show you snippets from my impromptu organizing session that ended up becoming a full-on refrigerator and freezer transformation. If you missed the refrigerator transformation, click here.
So, in the small freezer in the kitchen and the large standing freezer in the garage, nothing is in a designated place and items are placed in every nook and cranny wherever they can fit. So, again, it was time to organize this freezer and create some zones!
Here is the dining table cleared to be used as our sorting surface. And I started by emptying out the contents of the small freezer in the kitchen onto this table. I removed the door bins and the drawers and washed those up. I quickly categorized the contents of this small freezer and grabbed all the ice cream and popsicles to place in the large freezer for now while I, simultaneously, emptied the contents of the large freezer onto the dining table.
The homeowner was laughing at the footage of the bottom of the freezer saying it looked like it came from a horror movie. Don’t worry, it’s just a bunch of popsicles that thawed after the freezer was accidentally left open. It was then closed and it all refroze in a half-inch layer. Since this layer was so thick, I did use hot water to clean the freezer in this instance but only directly on the frozen layer. My refrigerator post explains how to properly clean a refrigerator and freezer to prevent damage. I refilled this container with clean, hot water and dish soap multiple times. This allowed it to loosen up and break off until eventually everything was all clean.
To begin to organize this freezer, everything from both freezers was then sorted into categories including fruit, vegetables, prepared foods, raw meats, and seafood. Then, these categories were refined further as I show you next starting with the small freezer in the kitchen.
After the small freezer was all nice and clean, starting with the door, I placed the ice packs on the top shelf. On the middle shelf, I placed a bag of some vegetable scraps for making broth along with a couple of small random items that would get lost in the large freezer. And, on the bottom shelf, I placed some popsicles and yogurt tubes.
On the top shelf within the freezer, this became the small sweet treats section. The popsicles are easily accessible for the kids with the open end of the box facing out. In the drawer just beneath, we have breakfast items starting with frozen fruit for smoothies in baggies at the back. Then, we have some easy to prepare items here for the kids whether they grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or grab a waffle to place in the toaster. In the bottom drawer, we have convenience lunch food items that the kids can pop into the microwave or toaster oven.
Here is one of my favorite things about organizing: tossing the extra packaging. It helps you to easily see what you have left as the items aren’t hidden within these boxes and you also free up space!
And, finally, to organize the standing freezer, we have everything now organized by category. In the door, we have the larger ice cream packages and some homemade leftovers.
Within the freezer, at the top, we have prepared foods in bags which are now easy to see and choose from.
On the second shelf, I was laughing with the homeowner because the whole left side of this shelf contains all varieties of frozen potatoes that you can think of with at least two open bags of each. They were previously placed in multiple locations within both freezers. Now, the duplicates are bagged together in large resealable bags and easy to see and choose from. Next to the potatoes, we have a variety of vegetables that are also easy to see and choose from.
On the third shelf we have some smaller packages of meats starting with hamburger patties. They have a picky eater in the house, but he will eat a cheeseburger any day. After consolidating all the open hamburger patty bags, it looks like we have four, no wait, we have five open bags of hamburger patties. I placed the bags with the least number of patties at the top and to the front so that those could be used up first. Next to that, we have some more smaller packages of meat. And next to that, we have some boxed, prepared foods. The opened ends of the boxes are placed to the front so that the homeowners don’t have to remove the entire box until it is empty. In the meantime, they can just grab what they need out of it.
Finally, in the bottom drawer, we have larger packages of meat and seafood which are categorized by type as much as possible such as chicken, pork, beef, fish, etc. Notice how the packages are filed? I didn’t catch the cleaned bottom of the freezer before I replaced this bottom drawer, but you can get a glimpse of the cleaned surface as I close the drawer basket.
I hope to revisit this freezer organization with the homeowners after a bit, so we can decide if they need any bins that we can label after a little space is freed up. Now that everything is easy to find, they can prevent making duplicate purchases and can use what they have. When you organize your deep freezer, if you find that you do need bins, it is best to get sturdy wire bins similar to the built-in drawer/basket here as you need the cold air to circulate around your items so that they freeze properly and evenly.
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Happy Organizing!
Author of “How to Organize Any Space in 7 Simplified Steps“