Take a little time to organize your refrigerator. A tidy fridge makes meal planning and prep a lot easier. You’ll know what’s in the fridge and be able to use it up, before it spoils. If you are wondering how long almond milk lasts or if you can use eggs past their expiration date. And you have no idea if Worcestershire sauce should be refrigerated, then use the search feature on StillTasty. You can easily look up use by and expiration dates. Hint: the cooked, leftover hot dogs from Memorial Day are expiring.
Fridge shelves are deep and items can get lost towards the back. When you organize your refrigerator try these baskets with handles. I use them to store smaller items so they are easy to find. I also use them to group items I use together; like everything to prepare a sandwich. That way, I can pull out the basket and have everything I need. Otherwise I have to pull things from multiple shelves. They are also great for preventing messes, just store potentially sticky, drippy things, like bottles of marinade. That way, if it leaks, the mess is contained and easy to clean.
When you organize your refrigerator try grouping like items together. Store the items you use together near each other. Creating a “leftover” shelf is a great way to make sure you use up leftovers before they turn into unidentifiable blobs of goo. Use this tip for organizing your food storage containers so you can find them when it comes time to pack up leftovers.
Organizing your refrigerator does not have to be an all day project. You can move things around a little at a time until everything has a storage spot that makes sense. Don’t be surprised if you find two (or three) open bottles of ketchup. And let’s be honest, is a fridge really a fridge if you don’t have some sort of wilted herb hiding somewhere? I have a habit of buying chives. What I’m not in the habit of doing is preparing any meal that includes chives. Hence the almost constant bunch of sad, wilted chives sitting on some shelf in my refrigerator.