How to organize your fridge
If you’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen, you might not think of blue masking tape and sharpies as part of the cook’s domain — they are. You can measure a chef by how well they label and keep track of everything in their refrigerator.
By that measure, I’m a less-than-great cook, but I’m working on it. Don’t commit to labeling every single thing that goes into your fridge, unless you’re That Person, and you’ll stick with the program. Me, I only label containers I anticipate forgetting about, along with those containing grains and cooked foods that need to be used before they spoil. As shelter-in-place continues to warp the concept of time, it’s important to remember you brought that takeout home two Mondays ago,quite as important, but it still makes it much easier to quickly sort through your perishables and leftovers and decide what needs to be eaten or cooked next.Once the fridge is nice and clean, use pen and paper to take note of each item as you put it back in its designated place and, if necessary, appropriate container. Attach this inventory list to the outside of your fridge. It doesn’t have to be a super-long, comprehensive list of every single thing you’ve ever put in there. Think of it more like a running list of your week’s groceries. Jot down perishables, note the date you put them in there, and cross each item off as you use it. If you want to go above and beyond, note how much of each ingredient you have. This process will add a little more work on the front end as you load things in, but it will make your life easier in the long run.My mother, the patron saint of kitchen organization, doesn’tuse this method, but she’ll tack her shopping list to the fridge, and jot down a few recipe ideas for each perishable item. That works well, too. Think about breaking your list up into useful sections — produce, dairy, condiments, for instance — so you can easily check what you’ve got available, and what needs to be used next. Having this inventory available will also make writing up your next grocery list much easier. Is it possible you’ll still forget about something and let it rot for a few weeks? Probably. But with a little extra organization, you have a fighting chance of using everything before it goes bad. This list will prove even more useful when organizing the freezer, since it’s particularly easy to lose and forget about food in there.This will feel more realistic and doable on some days than on others, but making a game plan for the ingredients in your fridge will help you work through produce, use up the last of a condiment or jug of milk, and create space for your next grocery haul. I’m not saying you should be thinking a week out, with a recipe planned for every meal. If that’s how your brain works, I envy you, and you probably aren’t reading this guide to begin with. But if you’re more like me, you’re still planning for today and tomorrow. That’s okay. Think about some building blocks that’ll simultaneously use up anything on its last leg, and get you through the week. Use the last shallot to make a salad dressing that’ll keep in the fridge for an extra week. Roast carrots, broccoli, and other hearty vegetables together with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and store them in one of the snap-lid glass containers you purchased. Turn any sad-looking herbs into an improvised green sauce , that’ll give them another lease on life, and is sure to be delicious on pretty much everything. The idea here isn’t to meal prep for the week. You’re preparing some of your staple foods in very basic ways, so they’re available to you when cooking doesn’t feel like an option, or you just don’t have time.Generally, not stressing is... not my forte. But when it comes to organizing and maintaining the order of what is essentially just a very cold closet, try not to stress yourself out too much. Wasting food is a huge bummer, and it’s frustrating to lose a head of fennel in the black hole that is a messy fridge, but some days are going to be better than others. Sometimes I don’t have the patience to put half an onion in a glass container, and it ends up cut side down on a little plate in the fridge where it makes absolutely everything else taste like onion. More often than not, kale skips the produce bag and gets squeezed into the crisper drawer. I use it the next day, and everything is fine. Every once in a while, I still come upon a poor head of lettuce that’s been sitting in there for who knows how long. I feel those pangs of shame, but I bounce back a little faster these days. There’s always tomorrow to clean out the fridge, write a new list, and try again.Email
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