The Best Tips on Fridge Organization and Storage

Keeping your fridge clean and organized not only saves you money, but you eat healthier too. Learn all my best tips on fridge organization and storage!

The fridge: a perfect example of what truly matters is on the inside. And friend, the inside of my fridge has been a scary place for the past two and a half weeks. Me being sick meant hardly any cooking, lots of take out and a strange smell that no one should experience. This large cold food box in our kitchen needed a big clean out, a deep sanitize and a reorganized system.  

So last weekend I did just that and now I can proudly welcome you to our freshly stocked, clean and organized fridge. Now this is fridge organization at its best! 

Now I absolutely love to open our fridge doors. Everything is clean and all the food is stored in the correct places. Oh yes – I did my fridge food storage research and  discovered I was making some big mistakes!

Here’s some pictures of my fridge before I started checking the expiration date on all the food and operation Clean-It-All-Out was officially started. I’m embarrassed to say, you can’t even see the back of the fridge!

And unfortunately, the refrigerator door was no better…

Refrigerators have different compartments that serve different purposes, they also have different temperature zones. This means if I store things in the wrong place, I’m basically not taking advantage of the modern miracle of the fridge. Which is crazy!

So, I’ve learned a ton and now I’m going to share all my fridge organization tips with you!

Keep Your Cool

The food inside your fridge needs to be at cold temperatures to prevent the growth of bacteria and other microbes that make food spoil—and can make you sick. So a good rule to follow is keep the fridge set at 40 F or lower and the freezers should be set to 0 F.

But even when the refrigerator is sufficiently cold, the temperature will vary in different parts of the fridge depending on how close they are to the cooling element. So this is why you want to master the art of the refrigerator so your food will last longer. 🙂

Doors

The fridge door is the warmest part of the fridge and this area should be reserved for foods that are most resistant to spoiling. So this is a good place to keep condiments, salad dressings, juices, and other foods that can stand up to temperature fluctuations. This is not the place to store your milk – like I was! 🙁

So the milk is gone from the doors and now all our juices are stored here instead. I even got some new pitchers that hold more than the original containers. So I can store more in less space. Works great!

Now let’s talk about the refrigerator shelves and the best way to stock them.

Upper Shelves

The upper shelves of the fridge have the most consistent temperatures, while the lower shelves are usually the coldest. So the top shelf of the fridge is the best place to store foods that don’t need to be cooked. This would include things like leftovers, drinks, and ready-to-eat foods like tortillas, hummus, and almond butter. 

Middle Shelves

The middle to lower shelves are where you want to store all your dairy products, sour cream and eggs. This center zone in your fridge is colder than the top and will help keep these delicate food items from spoilage. I found some great egg holders that hold fourteen eggs per holder. Which is perfect when you have just a couple eggs left over and a brand new carton. 🙂

I also like to keep our fresh berries in this zone as well. Placed in a couple berry boxes, front and center helps them be seen and eaten quickly before they can spoil. 

Crisper Drawers

The purpose of crisper drawer zone is to maintain humid conditions that will help preserve fruits and vegetables. But a word of caution! Don’t mix all your fresh produce together in a fruit and veg free-for-all.

Many fruits, including apples, peaches, plums, pears, and cantaloupes, produce ethylene gas, a chemical that will help them to ripen. Unfortunately the ethylene produced can also promote ripening in other plants, causing vegetables to go yellow, limp, or even sprout. So this is why I store veggies in one drawer and fruits in another.

So to keep all my fresh fruit and leafy greens sorted and separated, I found the perfect glass container clear bins. They are a great size to store leftovers or even use for meal prepping. And another bonus of the glass containers is that they’re stackable bins – which saves me space too!

Bottom Drawers

The lower shelves or your bottom drawer is your best bet for raw meat to be stored at the coldest temperatures. To prevent raw meat’s bacteria from spreading to other areas, just make it a general rule this particular section of the fridge will server as your meat locker. Only meat in this area!

It’s best to keep meat in its original packaging, and place it on a plate or in a bin that’s cleaned regularly. This is a great way to keep any raw meat juices contaminating the rest of your fridge. Yuck! 

Declutter 

Air needs to circulate around the food to keep it cool. So an overly stocked or crowed fridge can create warm spots, that will lead to food waste.

So make sure to leave some room between items. This will also help to give all of your food items easy access as well. Extra bonus: leaving a little wiggle room between your food items will also help keep your energy bill down too. Cha-ching – more money in your pocket!

Rotate it Friend

Before you go shopping for new groceries, move all the food that has been hiding in the back of your fridge towards the front of the fridge. This is an easy way to make sure you don’t waste any food. And you’ll know what you have before you go buy more!

So those are my best refrigerator organization tips! I hope they will help you get your fridge completely organized and everything in the perfect place – so nothing goes to waste. You can shop all of my favorite fridge organizers you see in this post here:

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