Stuff Parents Need

Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

4 Ways to Organize Your Deep Freezer

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Do you have a deep freezer (also known as a chest freezer) somewhere in your house? Is it a HOT MESS???? (I guess “cold mess” is more appropriate, here). 

A handful of months back, I shared with you how I organize our chest freezer. That post has really taken off on Pinterest (are we following each other?), which tells me that there are a lot of people out there at a loss for how to keep their frozen food organized so they don’t forget about it and have to toss it once it is too old to eat. Throwing out food defeats the entire purpose of having a chest freezer!


While I personally love the way I organize my freezer, I found 3 other organization methods that also rock, and I compiled them for your benefit! Please be sure to visit the other blogs listed below so you can get the scoop on exactly how they organized their freezers.

chest freezer deep freezer organization

 

Starting with the top left:

1. milk crates (best deal on Amazon for milk crates here)

2. customizable dividers (original post is no longer up, but these are the dividers used)

3. canvas totes and chalkboard paper (that’s my method!)

4. flattened food storage and baskets (my tip? Head to Aldi or Costco for the best deals on freezer bags and find baskets here)

 

How do you organize your food in the freezer? Do any of these methods particularly appeal to you? If you found this post to be helpful, please share it with your friends via Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter! No more throwing away forgotten food!!!

And if the cleaning and organizing bug has bitten you, here are a few more posts to help you get your home spic and span and organized!

mimedia

How I store my (THOUSANDS) of digital photos and videos

my-favorite-kitchen-cleaners

My favorite kitchen cleaners

youcopia spice rack

How I organized my spices

 

How to Make a Chest Freezer Organized and Functional

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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 instead of an upright freezer for two reasons:

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 for $175 (that includes taxes) and got free delivery. Pretty sweet deal, I think.

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 of a different color associated with it. Here are the color combos we chose based on what we had available!

  • Vegetables: green
  • Fruits: gray
  • Meats: brown
  • Prepared meals: blue
  • baby food: white
All of the food was placed into the appropriate canvas bag, and then the bags were placed in the deep freezer.
We decided to use canvas totes 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 (bought it on Amazon…money very well spent, in my opinion). This covers the top of our chest freezer and serves as our master inventory list. Check it out!

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. 😉