My Freezer: Organization

I have been begging Jason for a freezer ever since we moved into our house, and I finally got one for my birthday in May! Woohoo! I love having a freezer. Now when there is a killer deal on bread or meat, I can stock up without sacrificing the space for something else. I'm also excited to fill it with yummy freezer meals this fall so that I won't have to cook much after the baby is born.

My biggest reservation in picking a freezer was being sure I could keep it organized. A freezer isn't money-saving or convenient if you "lose" food in it and end up throwing it out months later when it's too far gone. That's one of the reasons that I chose an upright freezer--it has three shelves and a large pull out wire basket, plus six shelves in the door. I've dedicated all the shelves to a different category, so I always know where to look if I need some meat for dinner or bread for breakfast.

Finally, one of my best ideas yet: the freezer whiteboard.

I wrote the categories and drew the lines in permanent Sharpie so I won't have to continually rewrite them. The number of months in parenthesis next to each category is how long items in that category can be frozen. I use a regular whiteboard marker to fill in what is in the freezer, along with date, in the appropriate category, and when I take that item out, I erase it. This way I can always see at a glance what things have been in the freezer longest and need to be used soon.

Just a side note about the side dishes category: I really should have written "Miscellaneous" here, because I don't freeze a lot of side dishes, but I do freeze cheese, rice, raw vegetable scraps, ginger, chicken stock, and things like that that don't fit anywhere else. So no, I don't serve "cheese" to my family as a side dish.