Organizing Chest Freezer

I have a large chest freezer. I have lots of frozen vegetables in quart plastic freezer containers. These tumble over frequently and get all mixed up. I have some baskets that slide on the uppermost part of the chest. The quart containers sit on the floor and stack up to the baskets. I need something that divides the rows. Any advice?

By Judy Gurley from Warrior, AL

Answers:

Organizing Chest Freezer

I use the re-useable shopping bags and group the different foods in each one. Sure is easy to find stuff with the handles there to lift the bags. (07/27/2009)

By Roz Graham

Organizing Chest Freezer

Some freezers come with dividers, made out of the vinyl coated wire, like the baskets. You may be able to buy such a thing someplace. I have these in my freezer. If you cannot find the exact thing, perhaps you can find something like a shelf from an old frig or an oven rack that will work as a divider. (07/30/2009)

By Louise B.

Organizing Chest Freezer

I use plastic crates (like milk crates) to separate categories. I mostly keep meat in my chest freezer, so I have one for pork, one for chicken, one for seafood, and one for beef (and venison). I also have one basket that came with the freezer and one little shelf on which I put "miscellaneous" items.

You can fit 4 of the crates in my freezer. I just lift out the one I need. (08/30/2009)

By Linda McGregor

Organizing Chest Freezer

My parents have a huge commercial type chest freezer from the restaurant they used to own. It holds tons of meats and veggies, but keeping everything organized was a nightmare. They had several of those 12 oz. soda can crates from Pepsi and Coca Cola left from their restaurant just laying around.

Since my parents buy a lot of their meats and veggies in bulk to save money, my mom invested in a vacuum food sealer. She labels the packages before adding the food and sealing them. Then she places the packages in those crates and stacks them in the bottom. She keeps each type of food in its own crate (pork in one, chicken in another, veggies in another, etc.), but there may be two or three crates of each type of food.

She got tired of searching for exactly what she wanted so, she cut some index cards in half to make tags and wrote down the foods from each crate on them (like pork chops, pork fingers, pork roast, pork ribs, etc.). Then she covered them with clear packing tape, trimming off the excess, punched a hole in the corner of the tags, and tied them to the crate handles with twine. Now when she wants something, all she has to do is read the tags and she can go right to the food she wants in seconds. She uses the baskets that came with the freezer to store loaves of bread, packages of pecans (she has three huge pecan trees and spends her winters shelling them for pies and candy), and pie shells. (04/14/2010)

By Christy