An Organized Freezer
By Kathryn Weber

The cold puddle of water on the floor one morning woke me faster than any alarm clock. The freezer for some unknown reason decided to spontaneously defrost. Everything was still partially frozen, so I didn t lose any food — or any time transferring items to the freezer in my garage. It was the opportunity I had been looking for. It was my chance to clean out and organize the freezer once and for all so I could finally find something when I was looking for it.

My pantry is well organized. In fact, I often go in there and just admire its logical arrangement and organizational efficiency. The cans all neatly stacked on a step-shelf make my heart go pitter patter. But the freezer fills me with dread. My head and hands go numb in the time is takes just to find a box of frozen peas.

And while I search, small items fall out continuously because stuff is just rammed in anywhere and everywhere. Nothing makes sense and there s no order to it at all. I had to take action, and while I was waiting on the repairman to come fix the mystery defrost mode, it was my chance to tackle the freezer and create order in my frozen chaos.

Contain it

One of the problems with freezers is that we often store many small items. When they re stacked on a shelf they become a huge mess and you can t find anything. That s when I decided to create “drawer” space in the freezer using baskets to contain similar items. A small plastic crate holds bags of gourmet coffee. A large basket holds baking items that I like to keep in the freezer. The baskets allow me to pull them out and put them on the counter to find my item - so much easier than diving headfirst into the frozen depths to sort through the freezer s flotsam and jetsam.

If you have really small oddly-shaped items, add drawer organizers to the door shelves. These long rectangles can hold those little items so they don t fall out of the shelves and they can also be removed from the door so you can sort through them quickly. Line all your door shelves with these and you can keep sticky frozen drink cans from creating a mess in the freezer.

Label and organize

Most professional organizers will tell you not to label shelves in the pantry or refrigerator. Why not? They say it s too rigid. Well, I aspire to the rigidity of a Marine boot camp drill instructor for my freezer. I want labeled shelves and I want the items on the correct shelves because I want to find things in the freezer. I also want my family members to know where to put things or find things.

So, I labeled the shelves with labels for meat, ice cream, frozen vegetables, etc. And you know what? That s exactly where I find the meat, the ice cream, and the frozen vegetables. No more having to plumb the arctic depths of my freezer just to find those green peas - and nothing falls out when I do.

There s no great mystery about organizing. Simply put like with like.

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Placing like items on your freezer shelves means you won t have to look all over creation just to find those frozen waffles because they ll be next to the frozen pizza and the frozen dinners.

Make your freezer space organized this week and your numb and blue fingers will thank you.

Kathryn Weber is a decorating and lifestyle columnist and the publisher of RealHOME E-zine, the e-zine with ideas and tips for today s real families. To subscribe, log on to http://www.realhomeezine.com and get this free special report, The 10 Habits that Help You Keep a Cleaner House.

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