Do you have a fridge organizing hack? Asking for a friend.
One thing you should do no matter what, is keep your fridge full. Every time you open the door, the cool air gets replaced by warmer air from outside. If there is more air in your fridge, your fridge is less efficient. You can always fill more space with items such as beer.
You’re talking about pennies, literally pennies, in power consumption differences over the course of a year
Its more than pennies. When the compressor kicks in it’ll take 100-200wh a day just to balance the temperature out. In England thats an average of 50p a week, or £26 approx a year. You can get around some of this by using clear drawers like you often find in the bottom of the fridge as it will hold the cold in and stop the cold air falling out s yo open the door.
You can always fill more space with items such as beer.
That just means I open the door more often.
Nothing to add but a tangent story. I was living in NZ 10 years ago and rented a house for NZD300 per week. The house would have been classified as a shanty in my 3rd world country. Anyways. it was winter and I was watching ice forming in real time on my glass of water as I sit in the uninsulated kitchen. It then occurred to me that the 8C in the fridge is warmer than the kitchen air temperature.
That’s rough bro, hope you’re doing better now
Clear containers for anything that isn’t commercially labeled. My wife used to wrap leftovers (or anything, really) in aluminum foil. more than two thirds of the time I’d end up throwing it out after a couple of weeks because, since nobody knew what was in the mystery packages, nobody ate it. I bought some glass storage containers (the kind with the plastic, locking lids) so it’s obvious what is contained within. A lot less waste.
Also, I’ve got pull-out bottom freezer with one basket and one deep “bin” and shit got lost so I 3D printed dividers and organized it.
Buy some shallow but largeish Tupperware and put anything that might leak in it. Doesn’t have to be sealed, it’s just to catch leaks. This has saved me from having to clean raw chicken juice off the fridge’s shelves many times when the butcher didn’t wrap it too well.
Keep veggies in a crisper drawer or near the top shelves, especially if you keep your fridge real cold. Less risk of freezing them that way.
Try not to cram stuff right up against the walls. This hurts your fridge’s ability to circulate cold air and can lead to freezing of some items or at least higher energy bills.
Get a black sharpie and write the date you open something on its lid. I do this mostly with dairy stuff and oat milk boxes. No more guessing how long that cream cheese, yogurt, or butter has been sitting in there.
We do that. It also traps the cold air.
You put the desserts way in the back so it feels like you’re making an effort to stop yourself when you get that tube of cookie dough anyway.
Short things in the short sections. If anything is obscured, make sure it’s something that won’t go bad quickly.
Keep all the raw meat at the bottom (if you’re a meat eater, obviously). Cooked meats, salads etc above then if something drips you dont contaminate the food.
Will depend on what kind of fridge you have. The bottom drawer on mine is the vegetable box. It has humidity adjustments. Next is the “fresh” box, it has a temperature adjustment for keeping meats or vegetables. Then shelves, for the rest. The higher, the more preserved is the food. The lower, the fresher.
But this is a combo fridge/freezer. The fridge on top, freezer on bottom. Freezer is much the same. There’s a meat-drawer in the middle, and two everything-else-drawers.
Veggies in the door, condiments in bottom drawer, cheese drawer above that (CHEESE ONLY), good luck to everything else it’s going on a shelf. The freezer is a got damn mess tho.
I read that “condiments in a drawer, veggies in the door” can help you remember you have vegetables if you have trouble with object permanence (adhd) and no one forgets they have ketchup. I, personally, never forget I have cheese, hence the drawer full of it
Put anything that may drip (raw meat especially) on the bottom shelf, and definitely not on top of the vegetable crispers.
