Organizing the Freezer

It's spring, and for me, that's the best time to organize the freezer. Our chest freezer is in the garage, so I like it to be cool (not hot, not freezing) when I go through the freezer. If it's too hot, all the food thaws before I finish. If it's too cold, my fingers freeze. I also like spring because (at least in theory), we've just eaten most of the food over the winter, so it's a little more empty.

We cleaned and organized both of our freezers today and here are some things I thought about:

* I decided to keep all open bags of vegetables in the freezer door. I'm hoping that will help us find them and then use them until they're gone and then open a new bag.

* The challenge of a freezer is its depth. Once something is down deep, it's hard to find it again. As much as I could a tried to stack deep. I have stacks of chicken and hamburger that go from the bottom of the freezer, all the way to the top.

* When you have 2 freezers, (a freezer with your refrigerator and a chest freezer), it's a good idea to keep the things you use most in the smaller refrigerator freezer. I pulled most of my frozen pumpkin from the refrigerator freezer and moved it to my chest freezer. It opened up so much room and now I won't have it falling out on me anymore. I kept the vegetables, meats, cheese, butter, and other freezer stuff we reach for frequently in the refrigerator freezer.

* Freezers need to be organized every once in a while. I try to keep on top of mine, but I still found things I never thought could be in my freezer. Freezers also usually need to be defrosted and for sure cleaned out. We found styrofoam cup pieces, kernels of corn, meat labels and even a stray pepperoni in ours!