Monday, November 16, 2009

Day #18 - Organization Challenge - Refrigerator and Feezer

Hello Organizing Buddies! What's that? My freezer. . .a disorganized freezer that is! LOL! Yup, I decided to work on organizing my freezer and ended up cleaning and organizing the whole refrigerator! I did discover an interesting thing. . . .okay, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and as I was digging through my freezer, I found last year's left over Thanksgiving Prime Rib! OMG! It was cooked and vacuum packed but no matter, it's been in there for almost a whole year. Ewww, that's sort of disgusting. LOL!

I decided to throw away anything that had no date on it or any opened packages of frozen veggies and such. It's best to start fresh. We do have a "food saver" so many of our meats are vacuum packed and we usually write the date on them. We also have a large freezer in the garage but I'll work on that on another day.

I also cleaned out our refrigerator. I had cleaned the refrigerator a few weeks ago . . .and I mean CLEANED it. I took out all the shelves and drawers and wiped them so this time around, it was actually a quick and easy process. I threw away any left overs or anything that were past their due dates or if they just didn't look quite edible anymore and wiped the shelves a little bit! The refrigerator wasn't dirty so I was able to finish it up rather quickly.

So. . .today's challenge is to throw away anything in your refrigerator that are beyond the date that they should be stored. Most items that are in containers have a perishable date. Throw away all meats that you have no idea when you bought them or appears to be freezer burned. When you're done, organize your freezer and refrigerator in categories, such as meats in one section, frozen veggies, dessert, etc. If you have the time, clean the drawers and shelves by wiping them down or taking them out and washing them in the sink.

Here are a few links that will help you determine the perishable date of the food stored in your refrigerator and freezer:

Perishable dates for refrigerated food

Fruits and Vegetables

Iformation on perishable refrigerated foods

Freezing and food safey

More information on refrigerating and freezing food



Here is a photo of my refrigerator. There's a lot of space now. . .just in time for Thanksgiving. I'm pretty positive the refrigerator will be filled up when Thanksgiving comes around but for now, I'll just enjoy the fact that it's clean and organized! LOL!

You can't really see it but my freezer is organized by meats, to the left, frozen veggies at the top, microwavable food to the lower right drawer and desserts atthe top. Yay! I love it!

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful day organizing your frig! You'll be really happy when you're done!! There's nothing like a clean refrigerator!!

4 comments:

Lorie said...

This is my DH's job and he's pretty darn good at it!

Denise said...

OMGosh Maria, I was cleaning out my fridge a little today & thought to myself " I wonder when Maria will do this for her challenge", then I sign on to FB & there it is! So I am keeping up with you.....wish I had a big laundry room like you do. Mine is half the size. Look forward to the next challenge.

mel m. m. mccarthy said...

Great challenge Maria! I used to let science experiments build up in my fridge a LOT--but then it always turned into a major overall when I had to exterminate the critters growing in there. Now I try to get to reorganizing every couple of days, so things don't go bad and go to waste. Sometimes we make a list of what needs to be used in the fridge or freezer & check it off as it gets used up...when we're REALLY feeling like organization geeks. heehee

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