I come from a family of condiment hoarders. We love pickles, spreads, and sauces, but we can’t ever seem to finish them. This used to result in a Jenga-like situation in my fridge, with jars poised to topple out and break a toe every time I reached for the milk.
Then, in my early 20s, I started working in professional kitchens and had to adhere to strictly enforced rules for keeping food-storage areas tidy. In restaurants, organization is important not only because it helps cooks move quickly and smoothly but also because wasted food is wasted money.
The same is true at home. You may not see the effects of a chaotic fridge in a bad Yelp review or a balance sheet, but they will show in the time it takes to cook dinner and the stress involved. It’s been years since my last bakery shift, but I still use what I learned there to keep my leftovers, produce, and other perishables in order. In collaboration with Wirecutter, a product review site owned by the New York Times Company, here are three ways to improve your fridge organization.
Clean out and define zones
The first step toward decluttering your fridge is to take everything out. I mean everything. Deal with the moldy meat sauce you’ve been avoiding, and Kondo all your condiments. If that half-eaten jar of artisanal lemon curd doesn’t spark joy, toss it.
When you’re ready to refill the fridge, avoid treating it like a junk drawer for food. Designate different areas for different types of items. Your fridge probably comes with a few predetermined zones — crisper drawers, cheese drawer — but you can create more with trays or bins. Restaurants often keep smaller containers together on rimmed baking sheets, which are easy to pull out to get a better look. Wirecutter recommends the Nordic Ware Naturals Baker’s Half Sheet, which also comes in smaller, ¼ and ⅛ sizes that may fit better in some fridges. (These are, of course, great for baking, too, in a pinch.) For loose items like lemons, clear bins work better. You can find them in all shapes and sizes at a place like the Container Store.
Another great way to keep ingredients from getting lost in the back of the fridge is to use a lazy Susan (We recommend the OXO Good Grips Turntable). I use mine for basic ingredients we use daily, like mayo, yogurt, nut butter, and our bin of lemons and limes.
A basic understanding of food safety can help you decide what should go where in your fridge. Fridges are typically coldest toward the back and bottom, warmer on the top shelf, and warmest in the door. So the door is great for condiments with a long shelf life, like jam, mustard, and hot sauce, but try to avoid storing milk there unless you’ll drink it fast. Raw meat should always go at the bottom of the fridge — not only for the cold temperatures, but also because you don’t want a leaky package dripping chicken juice over everything else.
Beyond that, organize your fridge around how you cook and eat: Put the things you use often (or want to finish) front and center, and store ingredients you’ll use only occasionally in corners that are harder to reach.
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Impose order on your leftovers
You’ll find it easier to maintain order with a good set of food-storage containers. The best ones are clear and stackable, making it easy to see what you have at a glance. I prefer shallow containers to tall, deli-style quart containers, which can obscure the stuff behind them. For several great options in either plastic or glass, check out Wirecutter’s guide to the best food storage containers.
Even with the best containers, it helps to have a system for managing leftovers. One of the cardinal rules of any restaurant fridge is FIFO: first in, first out. This means that new items always go to the back, pushing older food to the front of the line, where it’s guaranteed to get used up first. To do the same thing at home, you’ll need to spend a little extra time putting away groceries or leftovers, but it will save time later on: Rather than rummaging around for the open jar of tomato sauce, you’ll have the food that needs to be finished right at your fingertips. Using trays or bins makes it easier to follow the FIFO rule, since you can pull everything out.
Write it all down
In restaurants, absolutely everything gets labeled with its name and the date. At home, that can help prevent the beef stew that you freeze from becoming a murky mystery container in three months. I (and most restaurants I know) like to use a Sharpie and painter’s tape (We recommend green FrogTape) for labeling because the label stays on securely but comes off cleanly.
For our tiny, dark freezer, which is usually packed to the brim, my husband went one step beyond labeling and stuck a white board to the wall, so we can keep track of what we have without opening the door. We list everything in the freezer that needs to get eaten, from frozen waffles to salmon fillets, and consult the list when we’re planning dinner or writing our grocery list (which lives on the other half of the white board).
If you have trouble using up all the vegetables in your fridge or remembering to finish off leftovers, the same system might help there, too. You can also look for a magnetic white board that will stick right to your fridge, if you’d rather not hang anything.
If, even after your best efforts, clutter starts to return (it happens to me!), just try to nip it in the bud before you have another leaning tower of Tupperware situation. Cook a clean-out-the-fridge meal, and use your condiments for a fancy toast-toppings bar. And when you really need to, pull it all out and start over.
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A version of this article appears at Wirecutter.com.
