The new fridge is supposed to be here between 12:15 and 12:30. After breakfast, I cleaned out the Texas fridge, then cleaned out the Jeremy fridge. The Texas fridge is the garage fridge we brought from Texas and the Jeremy fridge is the one they left in the garage. I was able to combine everything from those two into the Texas fridge, which is only a few years old and we’re keeping that one. The Jeremy fridge is being taken away. Things like cheese, eggs, water, beer, kombucha . . I just left all that in the garage. It’s plenty cool enough in there but everything else from that fridge is in the Texas fridge. The freezer is still full but I figured about noon, I’ll take everything out of that fridge and stick it in a cooler.
The house fridge. Ughh! I’ll take everything out of it about noon too. Things that can sit out for a bit will go on the counter. Everything else will go into coolers.
I asked Vince if he will help me with my plan. With four fridges, I can never find anything. Things get buried and forgotten about. I keep a list of leftovers that go into the fridge but once things get old and we’re not going to eat them, I sometimes forget to take them out, even though I don’t remove them from my list til they’re gone – consumed or thrown out. There wasn’t a terrible amount of stuff to throw out but any time we have even the smallest amount of leftovers, Vince wants to save them, so I save them, even though I know I’m eventually going to throw them out.
This list is mostly for my benefit – so I can print it and then come back to it as needed.
So, my plan is:
Kitchen Fridge – Regular kitchen stuff I use every day – mayo, mustard, garlic, ketchup, butter, eggs, cream for Vince’s coffee, sauerkraut, kimchi, (we try to eat one of those things with every meal), I usually don’t keep fresh veggies in the kitchen fridge . . things like bell peppers, celery, broccoli, cucumbers, parsley, cilantro, lemons, limes, etc. . . because if they start getting old, it will make the ice taste weird. I don’t even like keeping cheeses in the kitchen fridge because they can also make the ice taste weird.
In the kitchen fridge, we’ll also keep condiments we use often – Chick-Fil-A sauce, soy sauce,
Jeremy Fridge – The old kitchen fridge will become the Jeremy Fridge. It’s just outside the door in the garage. I’ll keep all the fresh veggies and cheeses in that fridge, as well as Dr. Pepper, bottled water, juices, milk, beer, wine, deli meat for sandwiches.
Texas Fridge – It’s around the corner in the garage so not as convenient but still not far away. In there, we’ll keep bread, hamburger and hot dog buns. I try to open the big freezers as few times as possible so usually on Sunday, I’ll take out the meat I plan to use for the week. Some of it will go into the fridge to defrost and some of it will go into the fridge freezer. That will all go into this fridge or freezer.
Basement Fridge – Drinks for when we’re downstairs or outside working, watermelons, cantaloupe, bagged fruit, extra eggs, maple syrup, jams & jellies (except we can each keep one jar of jam or jelly in the kitchen fridge). One of us has a tendency to have 10 jars of jelly open in the fridge.
As far as the freezers:
Kitchen Freezer: Tater tots, fries, ice cream, frozen snacks
Jeremy Freezer: Frozen veggies in bags or boxes, butter
Texas Freezer: Meats from the big freezer waiting to be used within the next week, frozen juices
Downstairs Freezer: This freezer will stay empty. I will use it for pre-freezing trays of food that go into the freeze dryer.
We’ll see how this goes. You probably know that we only order groceries once every two or three weeks so sometimes our fridges and freezers, yes, all of them . . will be stuffed to the gills and other times, they will be nearly empty but that’s ok . . that’s just how we do things. Even when they’re almost empty, with the canned food and freeze dried foods, we’re never low on food so with the shortages and never knowing what’s going to be available, we’re still ok.
I’m sure my lists will be adjusted some but for now . . it’s a start.
RuthW in MD says
FYI, if your new fridge has an automatic icemaker, then it is closed off from the other “smells” in the freezer of the fridge, and shouldn’t be affected at all by them. Sounds like you have the makings of a great new plan for food storage, Best Wishes!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Should is the key word. We had the same thing in Texas and here and the smells do get absorbed by the ice.
Janet Bland says
One of the residents of my house has a thing about pickles so we have a dozen open pickle jars in the fridge at any given time.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I did find four jars of cranberry mustard that was open, along with three jars of the exact same kind of green olives. There’s one person in this house who eats green olives and it isn’t me. 🙂
Kathy says
Did the new fridge arrive on time and is it working okay? Interested.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes! Just did a post. It’s been a crazy, busy day.
Linda+Garcia says
I only have 2 fridges, one in the house and one in the garage. Our garage is not heated, so in the winter, I can’t store much in the garage fridge because it freezes things. The freezer above the garage fridge is the bread freezer. However, I have 3 large freezers. Two chest freezers and an upright freezer. We get a beef butchered every year, so one chest freezer is full of a whole beef. The other chest freezer is full of other meats besides beef, things like tator tots, tortillas, chicken nuggets for the grandkids. The upright freezer is for my butter, baking items and nuts, frozen vegetables and my frozen leftovers. I don’t put much of the leftovers into the fridge, I freeze them. Then, I have a meal ready whenever I don’t feel like cooking. The fridge in the house, I don’t put much in the freezer because it is self defrosting and I don’t like how it makes stuff taste. Anyway, that’s how we roll here.