My in-laws bought us a deep freezer as a birthday gift for myself and my husband this year. We’ve been wanting one of these for a while, but until we moved, didn’t have anywhere to put one. We nowhave the perfect spot for a small one in our pantry.
We opted for a chest freezer
1. We only have room for a chest freezer. Part of our pantry is directly under our stairs, and there isn’t enough room to even stand up there. A chest freezer was the only possibility.
2. Even if we had the space for an upright, we still would have chosen a chest freezer because they are significantly less expensive. We purchased our model through Lowe’s, though you can often find them on Amazon or even on Facebook marketplace.
But here’s the thing about chest freezers that every owner of one hates: they are a MAJOR pain to keep organized, and more often than not, owners find themselves throwing away food that they completely forgot about and that they find a year (or more!) after putting it away.
We have a chest freezer to help us preserve our food and stretch our grocery dollars. We aren’t saving any money if we freeze food and then throw it away later. So I knew we needed to tackle the organization issue. And we found a solution that works for us!
First, we separated our food into different categories. These are the categories that make sense for us; you may need slightly different categories.
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Meats
- Prepared meals
- Baby food
Each category got a canvas tote
- Vegetables: green
- Fruits: gray
- Meats: brown
- Prepared meals: blue
- baby food: white
for two reasons:1. The handles on the bags give us the opportunity to easily move food out of the way and pull out what we are looking for without having to dig around and be hunched over so much.
2. Canvas bags won’t snap due to the cold (I have read that plastic bags WILL break and aren’t a good option). They also are much more flexible than sturdy crates, which is a method some folks choose for organizing their chest freezers. We have a bit more room in the freezer by using canvas totes.
With that said, it is definitely the case that our chest freezer cannot hold as much as it could if we just packed in food by itself. But if we did that, we’d spend SO much time digging around for things and being frustrated. The loss of some space is definitely an ok price to pay for the ease of use.
With our tote system, we addressed how to easily access the food we wanted. Now we needed to address how to know what we have so that we don’t forget about anything!
We decided to use a very clever invention, chalkboard paper
By using chalk, it is easy to just wipe off the item you have used and then replace it with a new item you have added.
There’s also a bonus benefit to putting your master list on the top of your chest freezer: it keeps people from setting anything down on top of the freezer (and it becoming yet another space where junk accumulates).
So there you have it! That’s how we stay on top of our frozen food storage!
This post contains affiliate links. If 100 of you buy chalkboard paper, I might earn enough money to buy some chalk. Wish I was kidding. 😉
Where did you get your canvas/tote bags from?
What a great idea! I currently use milk crates but am not thrilled with it as limits the flexibility…but honestly the idea I like the best is the chalkboard paper! Even if I don’t change to bags any time soon, I am definitely going to take inventory and mark them on chalkboard paper.
I use a similar system with the colored cloth bags you buy for a $1/$2 from Coles supermarket. RED meat. GREEN blached vegetables & others you can freeze from fresh. PATTERNED BAG precooked from shop pies, fish piece etc. MAUVE for my portioned cooked meals. BREAD in freezer basket 1. FROZEN VEGETABLES basket 2. Doing it this way I still have plenty of room to put trays of stuff I want to freezer. Ice cream, butter & other things like milk, cream or yoghurt on the fast freeze step on right hand side. FROZEN PACKET PASTRY SHEETS & wraps I stand vertically to the side of the step. Freezer is a 320 litre Westinghouse chest. Have nearly half a freezer to play with.
When we don’t have a whole side of meat in our chest freezer, it becomes too deep for me to reach into. I solved that by filling up gallon milk jugs with water and placing them upright on the bottom of the freezer, then covering over the top with a layer of cardboard–thus raising the freezer “floor”. This makes it easier to reach the remaining contents. TODAY, I am going to empty out the rest of the freezer and sort it using your canvas bag method–which is a freakin’ GENIUS idea– thanks so much! And writing on the outside of the freezer is a great idea, too, although I’ll probably use the side instead of the top–cause I can’t keep my family from trying to put stuff up on top of the freezer, and it may get rubbed off.
A friend of mine had milk crates upsidedown in the box freezer to raise base. You will loose space but it worked for her 5’2″ height
This is something I have struggled with for all thirty years of my marriage! I have sliding baskets at the top, I have nice Tupperware freezer boxes that stack beautifully, and I even have a couple of milk crates for meat. They stack fine, but once a bit of frost builds up, they are STUCK. Plus, we butcher our own meat,so when you put a bunch of Ziploced sausage in, it sags through the holes in the sides of the crate, freezes that way, and is nearly impossible to get out. I have to do the freeze-bags-flat-on-trays thing before putting them in crates, which is a lot more trouble. All that to say, I have never found the perfect solution. Different systems work for different foods, and NOTHING has ever worked for bags of tortillas, bags of cheese, bags of veggies from the store, odd-shaped roasts,etc. Those things make me crazy,and I think THIS may be my answer! Thank you so very much! 🙂
Yay! It makes my day to hear that I helped someone find a solution to a problem! Good luck!!!
Awesome Idea!! Thank you! Than Buying canvas THIS weekend!
We use the net bags that you wash dedicates in to store groups of items in our freezer. We bought the ones that have a zipper closure on them. You can see through the netting to see what is in the bag without marking it. I’ll have to try the chalkboard on the outside of the freezer.
Excellent idea – I have some of these unused so will be trying this idea 🙂
I stumbled upon this post when i was searching for plastic bins to better-fit my freezer. With bins I found at office depot, I actually had LESS space, probably due to stuff not fitting perfectly in the bins, and a bit of empty space around the bins. Either way, this works, but one improvement I made:
I looped a label around one of each of the bags’ handles. I used masking tape, but luggage tags would be excellent. Each one indicates the category of its bag in bold marker (i.e. beef/lamb, seafood, etc.)
I’ll return the bins to office depot today and try and find some better-fitting totes with the money I’ll save!
FABULOUS idea to label the totes! Luggage tags would be absolutely ideal, I think! Thank you for sharing!
I use milk crates. They stack easily & have handles to lift out too
I just use an expo marker (dry erase) on the regular top of my chest freezer.
Than you so much. My husband decided to clean out the deep freezers this weekend. We had no organization system. A google search and I found you. I had a whole tote bag full of tote bags to donate. Lol Now we are using them in the freezers too. I would have never thought of this. Now I know that I have enough food to last probably a month.
You totally made my day with your comment! I’m so glad it was helpful to you! Please be sure to tell your friends so that nobody else is letting their frozen food languish unnecessarily! 🙂
Where did you get the tote bags?
I love the tote idea. I use dry erase markers directly on the top of my freezer and the front of my fridge for inventory.
We still use and love our tote bag method! Love the dry erase idea, as well!
Thanks for this idea! It may solve the never ending question, ” Mom, do we have any frozen bagels left?” 😉
This is a great idea (found you on Pinterest!). I’m getting ready to buy a bigger chest freezer and really dread losing foods in there. Does anyone know if just spraying the chalkboard spray paint on the top of the freezer would work? I just love that idea, and I already have chalkboard paint here. 🙂
So glad you found me! My thought? It should work! BUT…if I were in your shoes, I’d do a little bit of Googling to see if you can find out. Not sure why it wouldn’t work, though!
Great ideas! I bought a markerboard top freezer and divided with magnet strips and created groups like yours to manage the stuff in the freezer. Will definately share this one. Thanks.
That is an excellent idea!!!!
What a fantastic idea! thanks so much for sharing. I don’t have a deep freeze. My standup freezer is hard enough to keep organized. I may try to use something like this system to organize that:) I’m new to your website. Love it!
So glad you stopped by! I hope the organizing system helps you out!
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Great idea! We just bought a chest freezer and I’m already facing the problem of stuff way at the bottom and who knows what it is…thanks for the post! =)
Thanks for stopping by! Yes, getting the chest freezer organized is a MUST so that you actually use up the food you store in there! I hope the system helps you out!
P.S. I have pinned this item on Pinterest too on my Storage Board. Thanks again,
Mel
Tiffany,
What a brilliant answer to a problem I had yet to solve in spite of having a freezer for Yearsssssss…thank you so much for sharing it with those of us who have to keep the whole “universe” ( read as: our house) and for 4 people too.
🙂
I’m so glad you found it to be helpful! I find the space I sacrifice in the freezer in order to use bags to be TOTALLY worth it! And the chalk board top looks cute, too! 🙂
This is a genius idea. Now I feel like I need to go buy a chest freezer! But really, the chalkboard paper idea is amazing. I wonder how I could incorporate it for my regular freezer…
Ha ha! A chest freezer is an AMAZING money saver….IF you keep it organized! And that chalkboard paper is so awesome. We also have it on our fridge, but that piece just serves as a place for Darah to color! 🙂