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There is absolutely nothing like a neatly organized and well stocked fridge. It’s honestly something that brings me SO much joy! And from how often neatly organized fridges are trending on various social media platforms, I know I’m not alone in feeling that way.
However, organizing your fridge can feel like an overwhelming task! To help make this task feel much more approachable, we are breaking down the 5 steps to take before diving into the organizing itself to set yourself up for success! They will help make the process a lot more streamlined so you don’t end up wasting all your money with fridge organizational products that don’t work, and an organizational system that doesn’t work for your needs.
These tips are going to help set you up with a solid base to then go and organize that fridge to your hearts desire. Let’s dive in!
1. Clear everything out
First things first, you need a clean slate! That means clear everything out.
Now this is something you’re going to want to do quickly to minimize how long food is out of the fridge and avoid anything spoiling. It can help to do things in batches (condiments, produce, dairy, etc.), as well as start out with throwing things out that need to be ditched before removing additional items that will be kept.
For example, before taking out all the sauces and condiments from the door, do a quick scan of what’s empty, expired, or something you know you’ll no longer use. Take the time to ditch all of that with the fridge still shut and good condiments inside, rather than dealing with trashing those items with the keepers hanging on your counter unrefrigerated waiting around.
Go through section by section. Look through the entire fridge and clear out what you need to. We all know there’s SOMETHING wasting space in your fridge right now! Don’t forget the spaces in the back where produce and leftovers go to die! We all have them.
Once that’s all done and you’re left with the keepers, take everything out. Move to a cooler or a spare fridge if you have one! But on your counter for a little bit is no big deal. Raw meat could go in the freezer for that time if needed! Take it all out so you can do a quick wipe down and move onto the next step.
2. Evaluate your shelves, drawers, and compartments and move things around
Typically, all of the shelves, drawers, and even the compartments in the fridge are all able to be moved around to fit your needs. So many of us forget about this and don’t take full advantage of how customizable we can make our fridges!
Do you have any spaces that you know don’t work for you and your family? A dead spot where things always end up hidden and rotting without anyone knowing about it? Do condiments have to constantly be rearranged because they don’t fit properly in the door? Time to rearrange!
It might take some trial and error to figure out the shelving, drawer, and compartment situation that works best, that’s okay! Obviously nothing is set in stone and you can rearrange as needed or once you’ve moved things back in.
Doing this with nothing inside really helps to see the full potential your fridge has to offer! You even could completely remove shelves, drawers, or compartments altogether if you find they don’t work for you. Annoying to store, but if taking them out makes for a much better system, then do it!
We’ve done this in the past with a shelf, and stored it in the small gap between the fridge and the wall!
3. Make note of what hasn’t work for you
Aka – the dead spots where your precious leftovers, forgotten about produce, and all those other goodies end up spoiling.
For us, it was our produce drawers. We have a lot of fresh produce in our house, and stuffing the drawers full meant all the items on the bottom were out of sight and out of mind.
Instead, I switched one of the drawers to house dairy items like cottage cheese, yogurt, and a few other stragglers that had a much longer shelf life, and could handle being a bit more out of sight. The other produce drawer holds produce still, but I try to keep it to the longer lasting ones. Anything fresh and prepped that needs to be eaten quickly is on the top shelf in front and the first thing I see when I open the door, so I immediately think to use it.
There’s always going to be more out of sight areas in the fridge, but try to keep items you won’t forget about or ones that won’t spoil too quickly! That’s made a big difference for us. Also keeping the chocolate back there so I don’t always immediately see it and grab for it is helpful in more ways than one!
4. Don’t feel limited by the predetermined uses for the spaces
This goes into what I just shared above! Don’t feel like produce has to go in the produce drawers. Condiments don’t have to go in the door. I know there are others as well depending on your fridge, especially the fancy new models with plenty of drawers for all kinds of things.
Although that might work for you, and that’s totally fine, don’t feel like it’s what you absolutely *must* do! Especially if rearranging would work better.
Keeping our quicker to spoil produce out of the produce drawers has been a game changer for me in actually using it and not letting it go to waste!
5. Be mindful what organizational products would help enhance and make better use of the space
Alright, so you’ve got your clean slate, you’ve moved things around, and you’ve figured out what you need to change up to make your fridge organization system work a bit better. Might be feeling like time to go and buy ALL the fridge organizers, but hold up before you do!
Organizational products are not cheap, so take a moment to figure out what you maybe already have and could use, and if not, what you REALLY need. Also, check return policies before buying.
One tip – for the spaces in the back of the fridge, it can be helpful to have some type of container or bin that you can pull out so you can easily grab anything that’s stored further back!
These super affordable bins are something I already had on hand and have been working really well for exactly that!
Alright, now you’ve got your roadmap to success to finally achieve #fridgegoals! Go get ’em!
Coming soon will be my top recommendations for how to actually organize once you get down to it! Will link here when it’s ready 🙂
