The kitchen is the most high-traffic room of a home. Losing control of the space is inevitable without the right habits in place to keep things maintained and well-organized. These top 5 need-to-know tips for an organized fridge and pantry will help you reduce food waste, eliminate clutter, and maintain order in the most chaotic room of the house.
Wash + Process Produce Right Away
Upon getting home from a grocery run; the bowls, salad spinner, strainer, and tupperware come out: it is time to process the produce. Berries get washed in a vinegar rinse, dried, and put away. Kale leaves are pulled off the stems and torn into salad-sized pieces. Celery gets cut and stored in water. It all happens upon unloading the groceries. I strongly encourage you to budget food-processing time together with your grocery shopping time. Here’s why:
Throwing things straight in the fridge doesn’t do anyone any favours. You risk storing food incorrectly, which leads to things spoiling more quickly. It might be faster in the moment, but you will be guaranteed feel discouraged from cooking all week long because Past-You didn’t do the work up front to help out Current-You. It’s way easier to make a salad to accompany dinner when all you have to do is assemble ingredients and chop a couple extra vegetables; versus having to have to start from scratch, scrubbing away soil, and peeling your ingredients after slaving over a hot stove for hours to prepare dinner. Do Future-You a favour and process your produce as soon as you get home.
Decant Immediately
Following along the exact same lines as my previous tip, but the pantry version. Decant dried goods as soon as you get home. Refill your spice jars so they’re full when you next go to cook a curry. Refill your bin of flour so that the next time you go to bake bread, you don’t wind up elbow-deep in a floury paper bag. Top up your oats, seeds, dried beans, etc. This also means you can recycle all that packaging right away instead of shoving it all away in a cupboard, just to tip over and make a mess when you start cooking dinner tonight. We’ve all been there… and I, for one, don’t care to be there again. Decant your food.
Store Leftovers Visibly, Dated, And Labelled
*cue the unlabelled jar of brown stuff in the back of the fridge that contains Lord-knows what and has been there for Lord-knows how long.* No thank you. Stop hiding leftovers in the fridge and letting them get shoved further back with every meal you store away. Keep them at the front, as close to eye-level as you can manage. And label your containers. (Everyone’s kitchen should have masking tape and a Sharpie in it. Ours are in our cutlery drawer for quick and easy access.) Put your food into your containers; stick a piece of masking tape on the top lid; label it with the date of when it was prepared, as well as with what it contains. This will hold you accountable to using up leftover food and knowing how long you have to eat it before things start going a little funky.
Clean Out The Fridge Once A Week
Our weekly clean happens every Saturday morning until about noon. This includes the weekly fridge clean. It’s the first task I do when I start tackling the kitchen: empty out the fridge; check through all our leftovers, crisper drawers, condiments, and produce; check labels and expiration dates; discard whatever has gone off and put back whatever is still good. This allows me the opportunity to wipe down the shelves and take stock of what still needs to be eaten. It also frees up space in the fridge for our next weekly grocery shop (which normally happens the day after this clear out).
Label The Shelves In Your Fridge And Pantry
Grocery store aisles have labels — why shouldn’t your fridge and pantry? And I don’t just mean labelling containers and jars. I mean: put little tape-labels on the actual shelves themselves. (themshelves…*smirks*) That’s right. My cupboard shelves say, “nut butters”, “jams”, “canned goods”, “pasta”, and that’s where I line those items up in rows. The door of my fridge has labels like “hot sauces”, “Asian sauces”, and “salad dressings” on it, and that’s where those items belong. It is a total game changer. So long as everyone adheres to the labels, there is no more searching for random bottles anymore. No more getting annoyed that your partner / roommate / family member puts things away in a different place than you do. This ensures that everyone knows exactly where everything is in both our fridge and in our pantry. Things are *always* in the same place, every time, no matter who used it last.
Which of these fridge / pantry organization tips will you try out this week? Let me know in the comments!
