Hey there y’all! I’m back today with another Small Organized Spaces post. I’m talking about my organized fridge freezer today. And as of last week it was most definitely not organized. But it is now, yay! And all it took was a few dollar store bins to get my sanity back. My fridge freezer had been driving me crazy. Couldn’t find what we needed, stuff getting lost in the back and piled high. If you needed something from the bottom of the stack you were in trouble. It called for either removing everything on top or playing some serious Jenga. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Unless of course Jenga is your favorite game and you need some entertainment throughout your day. Then by all means, carry on :). For me the mess in my freezer was not working. In this post I’ll show you how I fixed it!
*I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.*
Of course we need to start off this organizing post with a before picture for full effect. Gah!
Do you see what’s happening here? Literally everything was shoved in there and you hoped you wouldn’t lose a toe next time you opened the door. I always determine what I’ll be organizing next by whatever space is annoying me the most at any given time. This space was definitely annoying me. You can see I was already using bins and the one on the top shelf was not really doing anything. In order to utilize the vertical space, we had no choice but to pile stuff to the roof.
First things first, I pulled everything out of the freezer and sorted into like piles. I didn’t even know I had more than one bag open of the same kind of fruit. Oops. That’s what happens when your freezer is too full. I took care of that problem stat and consolidated them together.
And I also tossed one expired product that was way past its prime. One item isn’t too bad.
I also moved some items out to our deep freezer that we keep in the garage.
Then I headed to the dollar store to figure out some way to utilize the vertical space as best as I could. I literally just walked the rows one by one until inspiration hit me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Thankfully on this particular day, IT DID!
Here’s what I came up with. Magazine holders from the office section. These were only available in primary colors at my Dollarama so I went with three blue ones.They were $2 a piece. I found some similar ones on Amazon but they are more expensive there.
And here’s how the after turned out.
I lined them up there three in a row in my freezer and I am in love with how it turned out. We are big smoothie drinkers in our house and so we have quite a selection of frozen fruit on hand. Well these bins fit the fruit bags standing up perfectly. And they won’t topple over onto themselves now.
Just tickles me to no end seeing them all lined up so prim and proper. And I love that I can pull out an entire bin to make my smoothies. I just place it right there on the counter when I need it. Didn’t even anticipate that as being a benefit until I started using them that way.
The two bins on the bottom are clear freezer bins are from Winners but these ones on Amazon are the exact same size. And in case you’re curious how I organize my freezer door, let me show you. They have wire bins that pull forward but everything would fall between the cracks or underneath the pull out part. I fixed that problem again with some clear bins that fit perfectly inside! These are the ones I use from Amazon.
I love how something so simple makes a world of difference like that. Whoot! Let me know if any of you decide to tackle this on the weekend.
Thanks for stopping by today friends!
Laura
To see all the Small Organized Spaces in this series visit HERE.
If you found this post helpful, please share!
For those of you with an upright freezer check out these freezer organization tips HERE.
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Ann says
Well done, Laura! I have one large bin on my freezer shelf to hold frozen food bags, and I have no idea what’s on the bottom. You’ve inspired me to switch to smaller ones to store like-with-like AND add a bin at the bottom to hold my zip locks of frozen meat that do not stack at all….avalanches no more! Best of all, I have way too many empty bins in my organizing stash….I’ll find everything I need by shopping in my basement!
Laura Wittmann says
Shopping your house is the BEST way to do it!!
Theresa Simoneaux says
I can only hope your next post will address the full-size UPRIGHT deep freezer. Mine starts out nice and tidy until life gets in the way and tater tots end up with the chicken and chops! HELP!
Laura Wittmann says
Hi Theresa, these tips might help you:
https://orgjunkie.com/2014/03/upright-freezer-organization-tips.html
Laura