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Common problem for sure! We used to have the same problem. You forget what you have. We designed an inventory and location cheat sheet to help. My main chest freezer has dividers creating 5 areas, and has 2 baskets on top.
We usually have a lot of venison, wild game, this year we bought a hog, we garden a lot as well. The inventory count and 'map' tells us how much of what is where. We tape it up in our kitchen inside the pantry door. We can glance at the chart, decide how many meals we need for the next few days and pull it from the freezer.
Here's an old one-
I update and re-inventory everything January/Feb each year, mainly because we add a lot of game by then. If something looks freezer rotted- it get's tossed or turned into dog food. This system works for us.
I have a drawer freezer in my fridge, and I organize it in fourths. 1/4 is the ice bucket, 1/4 is bread, pancakes, waffles, etc. Those are the top drawer. Under the top drawer I have two bins, one is meat and fish, and the other is “other”, like french fries and other vegetables, frozen burritos, etc.
This way, I can easily find what I’m looking for.
In no way is this freezer big enough to store everything, so I have a stand up freezer in the garage. It’s well lit, so it’s not really organized, because everything is easy to see.
Lemon juice. My wife came home from a visit with her relatives in CA, and they have the BEST lemons! Big as baseballs and super sweet / sour. We juice them then dehydrate the rinds for recipes. We freeze the juice in mason jars and vacuum seal the rinds.
I've held off, on getting a "chest" freezer ($459 @ Costco,) for this very reason. The only way I can see is compartmentalizing the space. I'd use an upright as it uses less floor space, even though they cost more. I'm still on the fence about it, as I'd like to buy beef from the local fair (FFA Dist. 38 Dept. of Ag.)
I'd get a well cared for steer, from a student that raised it. Best of all, the money spent is tax deductible!
Nothing like getting higher quality beef/swine/poultry at 60 cents on the dollar!
I think the main reason why I got a chest freezer was because they can be bought non frost free. The catch with frost free is that food can go bad faster since the internal temperature is variable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Threerun
Lemon juice. My wife came home from a visit with her relatives in CA, and they have the BEST lemons! Big as baseballs and super sweet / sour. We juice them then dehydrate the rinds for recipes. We freeze the juice in mason jars and vacuum seal the rinds.
When it came to the buttermilk, I made 3/4-1 cup servings, put them in baggies, froze and stored them like that......which comes to another question.
Does one's storage question change, as in what to get, when they are freezing more bulky or irregular shape items and not boxes, like frozen dinner? Looking at the adds, they show them stuffed with the boxes......and mine are more the storage of "raw goods".
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 12-29-2020 at 05:50 PM..
I have a small chest freezer and bought a cheap magnetic dry erase board and keep it on the top of the freezer. Write down what's in there, erase when you use it and write down what you add.
Wow, you people are way more ambitious than I am. I have an upright freezer so I don't have to super-organize stuff or do too much rummaging around. I can see most everything just by opening the door.
Wow, you people are way more ambitious than I am. I have an upright freezer so I don't have to super-organize stuff or do too much rummaging around. I can see most everything just by opening the door.
Our dietary requirements and styles of cooking, I suppose. For example, my freezers were often the boom when it came to all the Wally World day old bread I could store in them, keeping loaves well beyond their time. Alas, though, bread is vastly off my menu now.
I see my freezer as a source for long term storage, from the day after candy sales so I have plenty to give chilly divers to "meat" and now other items, like the avocados, in response and prep against shortages from the Covid crisis.
A further point or two on the long term storage is that the freezer is at the far end of the garage and unless the truck is pulled out, rather very difficult to get to. That's the usual, lazy way I do it though in the past, I have managed to have enough space between the truck and the stuff on the side of the garage to open the shotgun door once I've shimmied across the front seat. Since the freezer is "long term" storage, that is not too much of a problem. Certainly kept me from scarfing my divers' chocolate when I could eat the stuff.
Finally, one thing about the chest freezer in the garage is that its access opens up into overhead space that is not usually used. This is far different from an upright where the door would open into the garage, space that is limited if the truck is not pulled out.
Wow, you people are way more ambitious than I am. I have an upright freezer so I don't have to super-organize stuff or do too much rummaging around. I can see most everything just by opening the door.
Well my inventory and list serves two purposes. In the winter (here) I can pull everything out, lay it on a tarp on the garage floor and it won't defrost. Just turn the heat down. I can keep the garage at 20deg easy. Then I can defrost the freezer by putting buckets of hot water in it and shut the top. After that- a good cleaning, inside and outside around the compressor and coils.
While everything is out- toss the bad food and inventory the good!
A little OT but for meats I double over wrap them with Saran and place them on the bottom. Meats will stay fresh as the day you put them in, no freezer burn - for 8 months at least. including bacon. I always defrost these meats slowly in the fridge for a couple or 3 days when I'm ready to use them.
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