Well Summer is here and the produce has started showing up and it is time to do some chores to get ready for “incoming!” The one thing I keep meaning to do is inventory and clean out the freezer. I need to see what I’ve got, what I have to get rid of and what we need to eat up to make room.
I am a fairly well organized person, but I am really bad with the freezer and fridge. My husband shines in this area. He is insistent that we label everything and sort by type.
Sorting works especially well for the freezer and is the only way to go for a chest freezer (ours was $40 on CraigsList). So, sort by date or type or whatever sorting floats your boat. Just make sure that you can find it all again.
We usually sort by type – chicken, beef, pork, seafood, vegetables, fruit. I try to keep a particular area or shelf for each type. Cardboard boxes work for this fairly well, although I’m on the lookout for some kind of bins that will work and stack better than cardboard – see-thru would be nice, too.
Here is a pic of my garden and how far it has come – lots of cherry tomatoes and the zucchini is going wild. I also have tomatoes on my container tomato. The idea with this garden is that we are renters and don’t have a lot of money to spend on elaborate raised beds. We were also not sure how good we were going to be at this gardening thing… So I bought the bench at a garage sale for $10 and containers I found for $3. The rest we planted right in the bag of soil.
Like I said, INCOMING!
My boyfriend is very organized. We took everything out a the freezer and wrote down what it was and the date it was put in. Then he made an excel spreadsheet which he hung on the side of the freezer. Now I just add or subtract items as I need to. When it gets messy he makes me an updated one. It works really well and I no longer have old forgotten stuff in the freezer and I plan meals around whatever needs to be used up.
Great idea! I never used to have a list of contents, but my husband got me started on one and it works really well. I use a page protector to put the list in and cross things off with a dry erase pen.