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Housekeeping Tips: Best Practices for a Tidy Refrigerator

A woman peers into a neatly organized refrigerator.A disorganized fridge can promptly become a big problem. A messy fridge can, in fact, threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The exciting news is that you can advantageously stave off these complexities by using a few simple organizational strategies. Keeping your fridge organized makes the most of your available space and keeps everything fresh and ready to eat.

Clean and Sort

The first step to organizing a fridge is cleaning and sorting all your items. Carefully take everything out of the refrigerator, verifying for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Eradicate anything that is past the expiration date or looks rotten. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not specifically clear about how long it has been in there, throw it out. Concerning your food, it’s good to err on the side of caution.

With everything out of the fridge, take the time to clean its interiors conscientiously. Wash and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins, employing hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. Consequently, you can easily start with a clean fridge for your new organization system.

Label Everything

The next step to an organized fridge is to keep an inventory of how long your food has been there. Whereas several pre-packaged foods will come with an expiration or sell-by date on them, for fruits and veggies or food that you bring home or that is leftover from meals, you’ll entail having a system to keep track of when it was added to the fridge and when it will need to be thrown out.

One good advice is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could simply do the same thing for other perishables inside of your fridge. By noting both when you brought them home and when they need to be used, you can see to it that you are using up the groceries you buy before they spoil and avoid eating leftovers that can make you sick.

Use Containers

Keeping loose items tidy in a fridge, like for example fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be stressful. Evaluate using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and make certain you have everything you want. On the other hand, deem procuring quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers time and time again.

You can further use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were bought. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of perishable goods so much simpler.

Develop a System

As you start off replacing items, it’s relevant to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will consistently know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. For instance, call to mind that particular items should be kept in certain places.

Meat should frequently be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. In addition, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil without delay when exposed to warm air at all times. You can similarly separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for those messy items to prevent spills.

Plan Ahead

As soon as your fridge is clean and organized, the fundamental thing you can put into effect is plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be wiped, and old items are thrown out every once in a while. Study about creating a cleaning schedule to see to it that your fridge stays organized. In particular, you could determine a day of the week or month to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By undertaking this regularly, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few admire.

By bearing in mind these hassle-free recommendations, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less struggle than you thought possible!

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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021

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