15 Ways To Optimize Fridge Space - Page 13

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of us are buying more food than usual and realizing that, whoops, our fridges and freezers can’t support it. I typically buy about five days worth of food when I hit the store. My boyfriend is the worst grocery shopper in history, and goes once or twice a day to the store to just buy things for that immediate meal—something I tell him often is very silly. “Why don’t you just buy more while you’re there?” I ask. “I don’t know when I’ll be hungry next,” he says. Silly man logic.

Everything changed in our grocery habits since the coronavirus came out. My boyfriend has started actually grocery shopping—like buying enough for a week or more—and I’m buying two weeks worth of food at a time. We don’t want to have to go back out to the store, or out…anywhere, really. With both of us increasing our grocery shopping, you can imagine that our kitchen is struggling to keep up. We were loading up our fridge and freezer with our supplies recently and we realized, uh oh, we can’t fit everything in here!

We don’t want things to go bad. We can’t afford that. It would be a shame and would defeat the purpose of stocking up for the sake of staying in. So we had to get very clever about maximizing the space in our refrigerator and freezer—and the rest of our kitchen, really. Typically, you probably see a lot of wasted space in a fridge or freezer. Packaging is bulky. We have the luxury of spacing things out. But that’s not the case today. We probably all need to organize our quarantine supplies. Here are ways to optimize fridge space.

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Buy pantry non-dairy milk

Product like almond and coconut milk can take up a lot of space if stored in the fridge. So stop buying the big refrigerated cartons. These non-dairy milks come in small, room temperature, pantry-safe boxes. Purchase those, and just move them into the refrigerator on a need-be basis.

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Keep apples on the counter

Apples do not need to go in the refrigerator. They can last for weeks on the counter in a bowl, so don’t waste precious refrigerator space on these. Apples that have already been refrigerated should stay that way until consumed—if you move them to the counter now they’ll become spongy. But keep new apples on the counter.

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Keep tomatoes on the counter

Not only can tomatoes be kept on the counter, they should be. This is one food that people often store incorrectly. Tomatoes are sun fruit—they grow, thrive, and gather their flavors through sun exposure. Because they’re mostly water, the second they go in the fridge, they taste like, well, water. Like apples, tomatoes that are already in the fridge should stay there but keep new ones on the counter.

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Keep these condiments on the counter

Many of the condiments we keep in the refrigerator are actually perfect safe to keep at room temperature for quite some time—even once opened. Soy sauce can last a year, hot sauce can last three years, mustard has a two-month counter shelf life, and ketchup has a one-month counter shelf life. Once refrigerated, they should stay there, but if you have freshly opened bottles, you can keep these on your counter and save the fridge space.

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Invest in Ziploc bags

Consider items that are dwindling but sitting in their bulky original packaging. Shredded cheese. Frozen fish sticks. Chunks of butter. Many items sit in big boxes and hefty bags, even when there is just a little left. Move these into size-appropriate Ziploc bags—they’ll take up much less space than the original packaging does.

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Organize by expiration date

Organize your food by what needs to be eaten first. The stuff that’s expiring soon should be in the front and the stuff that can wait a while can be in the back. Often, we have expired foods monopolizing space in the back of the fridge, because we don’t even know they’ve gone bad. Familiarize yourself with which expiration dates must be followed and which can be ignored to make the most of your food.

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Consolidate leftovers

If you have leftover potatoes, steak, and sautéed veggies from a meal, just store these all in one container. They sat side-by-side on your plate, so why can’t they touch in the Tupperware? Putting each type of leftover in its own separate container is a waste of space.

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Use the smallest Tupperware possible

Investing in a good variety of Tupperware can really help you optimize fridge space. Buy a set with all sorts of sizes, ranging from tiny containers for leftover homemade pasta sauce up to big containers that can hold a full lasagna. Always use the smallest possible container.

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Use your built-in egg trays

Open your fridge. Look in the door. Lift down (or up) the little trays. You may find little indents in the shelves, perfectly shaped to hold eggs. Some fridges have these, and they’re a great place to store your eggs. Keeping the full dozen (or larger) carton around when you only have five eggs left is a waste of space.

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Get baskets

Get some steel or ABS plastic baskets to store food in, inside your fridge. When you leave food sprawling around, it seems to have a larger footprint. But when you consolidate it inside of these baskets, it takes up less space. It’s also easier to grab food in the back if you can just pull a full basket out, instead of reaching back there.

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Use beer boxes for condiments

As for condiments that must go in the refrigerator, they have a tendency to flop over, lean over, roll around, and generally become a tangled mess. So next time you empty out a six-pack carton of beer or soda, hold onto that carton. Store your condiments inside of it. It will keep them upright and organized.

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Adjust or add shelving

Do you see a ton of empty space above your items? Consider adjusting or adding shelving so you can make the most of use of every square inch in your refrigerator. There shouldn’t be a foot of empty space between one shelf and the next. There are likely slots in the walls of your fridge to add shelves. If you can’t or don’t want to buy more shelves, see if any of your baking pans will fit in those slots. They can serve as shelves.

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Compress your lettuce

Lettuce takes up a lot of room, but it’s not actually a big product. It’s mostly air. So compress it. Stuff as much lettuce as you can into a Ziploc bag or Tupperware. You can probably reduce its footprint by three quarters, if you store it properly. Don’t keep that bulky plastic box that living heads of lettuce come in.

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When in doubt, move it to the freezer

If you have too much of something, just move it to the freezer. You can always defrost it when you’re ready to eat it. Or, you can save space from the start by just buying some foods frozen. There are a lot of multipurpose frozen foods that are just as good frozen as they are fresh.