Organize Your Refrigerator by Function

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I organize my refrigerator by function -- so that I can find things easily and food doesn’t go bad.

My refrigerator is always completely stuffed.  This is apparently hereditary -- there is never any space in my mom's refrigerator either -- even when she was single!  Now granted, some of her stuff expired, like 6 years ago -- my husband would never let that happen in our fridge.  But here is the biggest problem with having a completely stuffed refrigerator -- I can't find things and I don’t remember what is in there.  And that means that food goes bad.  So, I needed a better system.

I went looking for ideas on how to organize my fridge.  I found plenty, but all of the organization systems seemed to be geared towards preventing food from going bad -- certain things shouldn’t be stored in the door, put eggs up high, meat down low, etc.  I really wanted to organize my refrigerator more by function.  So, here are some of the principles that I followed.

Everything has it's place

First, I have a bunch of staples in my fridge.  Staples are those items that I always have on hand.  If I run out, I immediately replace them.  The key here is the staples always need to go in the same place.  Before this system, I cannot tell you how many times I have asked my husband where the mayonnaise is when it is smack dab in front of my face.  I have spent countless hours over the course of my life looking for things in the fridge.  No more.  Each staple has its own place.  If you take it out, you have to put it back in the same spot.  Here are all of permanent spots: on the left door the Ketchup, yellow mustard and mayonnaise go on the bottom shelf, fancier mustards, steak sauce, Parmesan cheese, pasta sauce (we always have one of these going), and hot sauces go in this middle shelf.  Then the upper two shelves are more condiments, but are sorted by the height of the container -- shorter stuff up here, taller things below.  On the right side door, I have butter up top, oyster sauce, salad dressings, and kombucha in the middle shelf, and white wine, yogurt, and half and half on this bottom shelf.  Inside the fridge I have eggs and tortillas up here, way in the back some things I use less often: capers, korean bbq sauce, and olives.  I have an extra loaf of bread here, 2 containers of tofu, homemade dips here, and almond milk.  This entire drawer is devoted to dairy -- cheese and sour cream.  Those are all of my staples.  Everything else is 

Organized by function

That means that the place I put them in the fridge has to do with how I use them.  Here are the functional categories that I need space for:

• Ingredients for meals
• Leftovers
• Vegetables for side dishes
• Vegetables that can be cut up and eaten raw with dips, and
• Fruit for snacks

I have two areas for the ingredients that I buy for meals.  These are off limits to any family member who is grazing since I need them to complete recipes.  Meat always goes in the lower area since if it leaks, I don't want it to drip on anything else.  Leftovers go in these two areas.  Vegetables for side dishes go here and vegetables to be eaten raw are in this drawer.  This bottom drawer is entirely devoted to fruit for snacking, but it also includes some staples like lemons, limes, and ginger.  These two areas are overflow.  For example, I may have more ingredients for meals right after shopping, but towards the end of the week have more leftovers.  These spaces are designed for flexibility.

Tips

Obviously everyone's fridge is configured differently, but here are some more universal tips for keeping your fridge organized.

• Shop weekly - I usually shop once I week on Mondays -- I loathe grocery shopping and try to avoid going more often than this.   Before I put the new groceries in, I take out old stuff and either dispose of it or try to use it up.  This puts me on a schedule to look at things weekly so that I'm cycling through things and know what is in there.
• Labels - I have a label maker and I use it!  Mostly this is a reminder for myself until I start to remember where things go by habit.  It helps my family as well, who can be sometimes bewildered by my changing organization systems.
• Shelf height - Most refrigerators now have adjustable shelves.  Take advantage of this!  Change things around until you have it adjusted the way your food fits best. 
• Trays - I use trays to protect against spills and help me get to the back without having to rearrange everything.  See I can just pull this whole tray out.  I bought all of these trays at the dollar store.  They also make it easy to transfer stuff from the fridge to the work area.  And finally,
• Storage containers - Use storage containers for leftovers that use your space efficiently.  Try to avoid using round containers and make sure they stack well on each other.  I'm a bit of a nut about standardization and all of my containers work well with each other. I have a video on this if you are interested. 

And that's it!  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!