Kitchen,  Organization

The Benefits of Organizing Your Freezer


Here is how you can save money, time and frustration just by organizing your freezer on a reasonable budget.

Imagine: You need something in your freezer but you are wondering if you still have some of that left in the freezer? It’s very frustrating to go look for something in your freezer because most of the time you either:

  • a- can’t find what you are looking for because everything is pilled up
  • b- find all the things you weren’t looking for and didn’t know you had
  • c- find food at the very bottom filled with frost bite

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the above, you are at the right place. I’ve been there and have tried different solutions. Here are my tips and tricks to organizing your freezer.

Organizing your freezer (bottom drawer)

It’s very common nowadays to have a refrigerator with the fridge at the top and the freezer at the bottom. This configuration is a great advantage for the fridge because its content is at eye level. What about the bottom drawer freezer? Most of the time, things just get dumped in the freezer drawer, right? Therefore, you never know where is what. I’m assuming that’s what happens at your house since that’s what happens on occasion here at our house.

I recommend determining how the bottom drawer freezer can be practical for you and only limit certain items to go in it. Determining the type of items should most importantly be based on how you drawer is set-up.

  • Does your freezer drawer have different levels?
  • Is it divided? Can it be divided with bins?
  • Do you have an ice cube maker or ice cube trays?

Once you’ve established how much space you have and what would fit the best, you can start playing “tetris” with your items. (Yep! I’m a 90’s kid, can you tell?) You goal during this process is to maximize the space you have as much as possible. Remember to leave a little bit of space for extra items that you may buy or stock up on in the future.

Here is how I organized our freezer drawer with different bread types.

Picture of my freezer drawer divided in two with loaves of bread on the left side and all other bread types on the right side.

We have a divider included in our freezer drawer. I used it to separate the loaves of breads on the left and the bagels, waffles and croissants on the right.

Picture of my top freezer drawer which contains our ice cube bucket (since our fridge makes ice) and two smaller bins on the right to store ice packs and blocks of cream cheese.

In the upper level of our freezer drawer I added small silicone tongs in our ice bucket. I gathered all our ice packs in an old empty butter container so they won’t slide around in the freezer. Recently, I added a container for frozen cream cheese bricks and voila!

Organizing your freezer (chest freezer aka deep freeze)

At our old house, we had a small chest freezer. Those types of freezers tend to be deeper and you tend to lose items easily. I did my best to organize the one we had with containers and reusable bags to separate items and it worked out o.k. but it wasn’t great.

I did find this video of a well organized chest freezer. Her research really paid off and made me wish I had these bins for our chest freezer.

If containers are not an option for you, you could always keep track of your frozen items on a list. I’ve done this with our chest freezer. It saved me from going down stairs in the basement and emptying the whole freezer to see what we had at the bottom.

If you choose to be organize with your freezer items with a list, do your best to update it every time you take something out or add something in. My trick was to print a Freezer Inventory List and place it in a plastic protector so that I could use a dry erase marker to update it.

Organizing your freezer (upright deep freeze)

Ever since we were made aware of their existence, we knew we eventually wanted to update to an upright freezer so we waited to get a good deal on one.

We finally got an amazing deal on a floor model at Best Buy so we took it and ran! Just kidding! We couldn’t run with it, it hardly fit through our basement door frame Ahah!

Quick tip: make sure you measure the width of your freezer as well as the width of the door you may have to pass it through to make sure it will fit once you bring it home.

Going from a deep freeze to one that was upright was a real game changer for us! It really gives you the opportunity to arrange items upright and following my freezer space saving tips instead of having your frozen items stacked one on top of the other when organizing your freezer. Furthermore, here are some Glass Jar Options to Freeze Food in for you.

Picture of the inside of our upright freezer showing that there are two bins on each shelf to contain our frozen items.

I added plastic bins that I labeled to separate my items.

  • Misc.
  • Chicken
  • Beef
  • Pork
  • Fish
  • Frozen veggies
  • Frozen Meals
Picture of the inside of the door from our upright freezer.

In the door, I have frozen treats at the top and frozen fruits in all the other shelves.

Having a place for everything with the bins makes it easier to find specific items. It also helps me see and assess if we are low on something and if I need to get more or not. Bonus: because nothing gets lost, we save money on food. Yasss!

On a final note

Organizing your freezer is also the perfect opportunity to clean it as well as go through your items and only keep the ones that are stile good and not full of frost bite.

Remember that depending on your freezer’s location that its content may vary from one household to another. For instance, if your freezer is not in the kitchen, make sure that is contains the items that you don’t use as often. Try keeping the items you do use more frequently in your freezer drawer closer to the kitchen.

You may have to try out different layouts and even switch items around from your drawer freezer to your deep freeze and vice versa. That’s perfectly fine. You can make as many changes as you need until you achieve the look and feel that you want.

When was the last time, you looked into your freezer and you didn’t feel frustrated? Let me know in the comments how you organize your freezer.


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