Really, This Is How You Should Be Organizing Your Freezer

With the option to buy food in bulk and make freezable meals ahead of time, it's a good idea to organize your freezer. And the best way to do it? You need to make food easy to see and easy to access at a moment's notice. Follow these tips below.

By freezing items in smaller, single serving portions, you can waste less food by only thawing what you need. It also helps by making thawing times shorter since thawing a large frozen item takes much longer than thawing smaller portions.

If possible, freeze things lying flat to make more space available in your freezer. You can freeze liquid items such as soups, stews, chili, and even BBQ by placing them in plastic freezer bags and laying the bag flat to freeze. This making stacking items much easier.

To keep foods from becoming freezer burned, make sure you only use freezer friendly containers to freeze foods. Use freezer friendly plastic bags, or plastic and glass airtight containers that are close to the size of the food you are freezing. Air is the enemy of frozen foods and can cause freezer burn, so it's extremely important to squeeze out as much air as possible from plastic bags before sealing them. Vacuum sealers like the FoodSaver are great for removing air from your food bags to keep freezer burn at bay.

By storing like items together, it is much easier to find what you need in your freezer. For example, you should store all meats together, vegetables together, soups and stews together, and so forth.

You should label everything you put in your freezer with the name of the item and the date it is frozen. Try to use the items that have been in your freezer the longest first. While food can be frozen for long periods of time, it will start to lose taste if frozen for more than three months.

Keep a magnetic dry erase board on your refrigerator with a list of items in your freezer. This will help with grocery shopping and meal planning.