Jump Start Jan: Declutter and Organise Day 5
Time for another kitchen-based quick declutter as today’s activity. It’s sort out the freezer day, so let’s get cracking.
Freezers often end up in a mess, although fridges tend to get more attention because the food in them spoils a whole lot quicker. Think about it. You chuck something in the freezer, and you pretty much assume it’s safely preserved forever, and then you forget about it…
Soon enough your freezer is full of forgotten items, and you can’t even work out half of what’s in there, but it isn’t going off so it still isn’t too urgent. Until you run out of space, yet at the same time it feels like there’s hardly anything to make a meal out of.
Time for a freezer sort out then?
This is a quick declutter, so you don’t need to go through the whole rigmarole of defrosting the entire thing from top to bottom. Work fast so nothing has time to start thawing out.
- Get everything out of the freezer and pile it all together in a box or coolbox. Cover with a blanket to insulate it.
- With a dry, lint-free cloth, dust out all the freezer compartments to remove any crumbs, bag ties or anything else.
- Go through the food you’ve removed and take out anything that’s more than 3 years old. Recycle it as food waste (things can eventually go off in a freezer, it just happens at a glacial pace)
- Group remaining food together: fruit, vegetables, bread, meat, fish, dairy, veggie or vegan alternatives, desserts, main courses, snacks etc
- Make a list of all the food you’re keeping
- Put the food away in your chosen groups, giving each one a shelf, half shelf or freezer basket. Put the oldest food in each group on the top of the pile so you remember to eat it first
- Close the freezer door as soon as you can
- Put your new food list somewhere easily visible
- Make a shopping list for anything that might be missing from your food stocks – try to pick anything urgent up before the end of the week
- Consider making a menu to start using up some of your freezer food (this will be very helpful with the forthcoming Tenner Week challenge, which starts in the next couple of days)
There you go, it should only take a few minutes.
I confess that I’m slightly dreading tidying out the freezer here, as the labels have come off some of the frozen goodies somehow. Not looking forward to ‘guess the mystery foodstuff’ very much!
Come on, own up. Does your freezer need a right old blitzing? How quickly do you think you’ll be able to sort that frosty household appliance out?
