One thing this quarantine thing has brought me is a longer list of home projects I still have no time to get done. Ya feel me? I know you do. Painting, purging, reorganizing, cleaning, the list goes on and on and the time just doesn't appear like the to do list items do!
First of all, these pictures are quite basic and nowhere near Pinterest-worthy. But this is real life. This is quarantine life too. Plus, I don't have a big, beautiful farmhouse kitchen or a pop up mcmansion in a stepford neighborhood. I live in a house built in the 80's, with a kitchen with dark cabinets from the 80's. Heck, I still have a side-by-side fridge. So.... space is a BIG issue.
Here we go!
I only did the fridge side today. Freezer will be another day because I have a standing freezer in the basement and I need to do both at the same time.
Here is the before. I have 4 pocket shelves on the door and 3 main shelves, plus a cheese drawer and 2 fruit and veggie drawers.
I took out all of my organizing containers I bought (links and reviews at the bottom of this post) and gave them a good clean.
I then emptied the entire fridge and cleaned it from top to bottom. I cleaned the sides, the back, and every single shelf and drawer.
Remember Kate from John & Kate Plus 8?! I felt like her today, scrubbing it down and feeling a sense of accomplishment. There was this one episode when they moved to their new house and she spent 4 hours cleaning the fridge. I was lucky this all only took me about 2 hours, and that included emptying, cleaning, and putting back together! Nowhere near as crazy as she was, thank goodness =)
Apparently, we have a mild obsession with condiments. Anyone else?!
I seriously could not believe how much we fit inside after I emptied everything out!
We use one of our fruit/veggie drawers for produce and the other one we use for our son's snacks so they're easily accessible to him.
Shelves and drawers were everywhere in my kitchen. And my kitchen isn't very big!
Our cheese drawer is pretty small but I try really hard to maximize the little space we have.
Putting everything back took some strategizing and planning. One thing I did was rearrange where the shelves were. By doing that, I was able to give myself an extra shelf! See where the egg container is?! That space didn't exist before! I feel SO accomplished just from that standpoint. An extra shelf means extra space!
I spent some time sorting and categorizing what we have, made a serious list of groceries we need next time we venture to do that, and listed out some things I forgot we had for meal planning this week. We have been doing great with not wasting food during quarantine and I hope this lasts when we go back to normal. We had a tendency before to have food expire and get tossed that really shouldn't have happened.
And... the finished fridge! It was well-worth the 2 hours on a Sunday to get this accomplished and I hope it stays this way for a while because I now know where everything is, can see every single item in the fridge easily, and have maximized the space well so we have room to spare too!
Here's the products I used and my thoughts on them too!
Lazy Susan from mDesigns.
I used this on the third shelf from the top for small bottles and containers. It spins easily and it's small enough to only take up half the shelf in the fridge. I also have this larger lazy susan which will be used in my pantry, when I get to that. Hoping for 2020 on that project too.
Fridge Organizer Bins
These are my saving grace for this as well as for the freezer. Because my fridge is a side-by-side model, the larger clear bins don't work for me. If I use one on a shelf, it doesn't leave me much room for anything else. So I used the egg container, which I love because it holds 14 eggs so you don't have to have 2 cartons in your fridge at a time. I also used the can organizer (for beer, because, well, priorities over here!) and then the two smaller clear organizers. One I used on a shelf for snacks and one I used in the bottom drawer for my son's snacks. This kit comes with 6 organizers - the 4 I used plus two more big containers. The second picture in this post shows the containers and the sizes.
Rubbermaid Food Savers
I got these a while ago and they've been great with helping our produce last longer. I was putting them on a shelf but that was taking up space. I finally realized the two large containers fit inside my produce drawer. Space saver!!
Freezer Shelves
In the basement freezer, these have come in handy with giving us more room to stack, especially since so many things these days come in baggies instead of boxes. I was using sideways magazine files for a while but these just hold up better for us!
I hope this purge and rebuild helps you too. I'll share the freezer side (and the pantry) when I magically find time again!
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