Or how to keep your food from becoming sentient.
Have you ever opened up your fridge to have to dig through stacks of leftover food, bags with questionable contents, and a head of lettuce you thought you had thrown out last week? All just to find the one jar of mayo you need for a sandwich. Or what about putting some hamburger onto a plate in your fridge before work, and coming home to find it spilled down all three shelves and now you have a mess to clean up. These situations are ones we all face when we don’t have an organized fridge. Fortunately, there is a way to fix it.
What Most People Do
Most of us will toss our food into the fridge without any sense of order. Crushable things might be on top, to keep them away from any damage. On the door, you have the weird and annoying thin shelves that are only good for eggs, drinks, and condiments because what else are you going to fit there? Then you have the drawers at the very bottom that claim that they’re perfect for fruits and vegetables. Except, if you’re like the majority of us, that ends up meaning you have a head of bland lettuce that rolls around for a month, a couple of apples in the other drawer, and one corner that might have been a tomato at one point, but now you’re waiting for it to gain sentience.
And the rest? The whole great middle of the fridge? That’s Free Territory. That’s where you put leftovers, the meat you’re defrosting for tonight, this week’s lunches, and anything else you can put in there. If it can be stacked, it will be. Of course, that means that if it can be forgotten about, it will be.
Why Do I care?
A good question. First off, organizing your fridge will mean that things like the weird semi-sentient tomato are less likely to happen. When you know what you have, you can plan accordingly for your meals, and keep foods from spoiling before they get used. More importantly, it cuts down on cross-contamination. When you have your foods stacked every which way, and without any clear separation between them, there’s too great a chance for foods to touch things they shouldn’t. There are three different types of cross-contamination that we're talking about. One might be as simple as one piece of fruit spoiling and then being pressed close to another and causing it to spoil. Or you might go up another level and you’re dealing with two different foods being stored next to each other when they shouldn’t. An example of that is squash and apples. Apples give off ethylene gas which will make the squash turn yellow and spoil before they should have. The third level is the one we hear about in schools, but don’t always think about. Storing raw fish and meat in your fridge, even in the store packaging, is complicated. It doesn’t take much for some of the juices to drip and get onto anything nearby in the fridge. This can be just from you reaching in and grabbing the meat, and it drips off your hand. It can be from overflowing onto lower levels, from any of the edges of the shelf. How it happens, doesn’t really matter. The problem is still that whatever it’s dripped onto, if not properly enclosed, is now unsafe to use.
What You Should Do
You’ve undoubtedly realized that this isn’t a state you want to be in. If nothing else, wasting food bites into your pockets over the long term. How then to organize your refrigerator? With buckets and boxes and time-consuming systems? Sure, you could do that if you have plenty of time, but we certainly don’t. Instead, we looked to the experts to see what they had to say on the matter.
Let’s start on the door, working from the top shelf down.
The top shelf on your door is best utilized by putting your dairies here. That’s going to mean eggs, butters, and any cheese you use regularly. If you are putting cheeses there, you’re going to want to wrap them in either wax or parchment papers, to keep them isolated from smells.
The middle shelf should be dedicated to condiments, salad dressings, marinades, and similar concepts.
Your bottom shelf on the door should be for all beverages, and if it’s large enough, milk.
There, now your door is all done and dusted. Still with us? On to the body of the fridge. Again, we’ll start at the top and work our way back down.
The top shelf of the fridge should be used for foods that are ready to eat. This can be everything from foods you’ve already cooked, pre-made meals, salads, pickled foods and fruits, either already sliced or whole.
Moving on to the middle shelf, or shelves of your fridge. Here is the one thing that doesn’t change much between the original version of your fridge and this new and improved version. Here is where you’re going to put your various leftovers. Tupperware is your friend because then you can put in the other foods on these shelves. Cheeses, that are prepackaged, eggs in a carton, and any cold cuts and sandwich breads. (Although we will point out that if you are going through a loaf of bread in a week, it’s perfectly acceptable to keep your bread in a breadbox.)
Finally, we have the bottom shelf. Here is where you’re going to be putting any meats that are raw. Beef, chicken, pork, fish, it doesn’t matter. It goes here. The ideal method is to store them in sealed containers. So take them out of the store-bought packaging or at least put them into a casserole dish either before you let them defrost or cook them.
We’re not ignoring the crisper drawers, don’t worry. However, they’re much easier to deal with because they are sealed. When storing vegetables, there are a few tips for keeping things fresh longer. Start off by washing your veggies before you store them. Wrap them in paper or plastic in order to prevent contamination (better safe than sorry.) For salads and herbs, you’ll want to wrap them in damp paper towels before storing them to prevent them from drying out.
Now that you know how to organize your fridge to keep your food safe and fresh for the longest amount of time, what do you think? Are you going to make the change or would you rather stick with your current system? Let us know in the comments below or over on our Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you.
If you’re having issues with your refrigerator, or any of your other appliances, we’d love to help! We’re here to serve, whether your refrigerator has stopped running or your dryer is making a really weird rattling noise. You can call us at ((214) 599-0055) or go over to our website to make an appointment. We want to help all of our clients in Garland and the surrounding areas.