Introducing the chest freezer.

It’s a great convenience to be able to have a chest freezer at your disposal. You can really pack it full of wonderful foods that can be stored for future use without taking up extra room in your fridge or pantry.

However, there is also a downside to chest freezers.

They can turn into a bottomless pit of frozen ice that is really only good as extra countertop space. I’m going to give you a few simple tips that will help you maximize your chest freezer space and make it an innovative tool instead of wasted space.

 

 

Tools for Organizing your Chest Freezer:

• • • freezer baskets
    • dollar store bins

 

Most chest freezers come with at least one basket that covers a portion of the top space. We are going to take advantage of that basket and also add some bins and if you have the funds, purchasing another basket to put on the top would also be a great use of space. Since you usually have plenty of space there for at least two baskets, but you’re only usually given one with the chest freezer.

 

 

Tip #1

• • Categorize the food you are already storing in your chest freezer.

For example, I have fruit and other drink mixes that I use to make shakes and I put all of those ingredients into one bin.

You could do the same with a certain type of meat or frozen veggies or anything else you can group together that makes sense to you.

 

 

 

Tip #2

• • Think about box placement.

In our house, we usually have at least several frozen pizzas on hand just in case time is short and I need to quickly make a meal. I usually put the boxes on the sidewall or on the bottom. So I can stack bins on top because you can easily remove a bin and see what’s underneath for boxes.

 

 

Tip #3

• • Consider accessibility.

Once you have things categorized and you have a basic idea of where things will fit, that’s the time to think about convenience.

What do you use most often?
What do you need to have easy access to?
This can be something like snacks that are easy for young children to heat up themselves. So it needs to be on top easier for them to grab. Or maybe it’s the basket full of smoothie ingredients that you use early in the morning and don’t want to have to dig around for.

 

 

Tip #4

• • Utilize the structure of your chest freezer.

Our chest freezer is pretty small, but I can still pack a lot into it. There is a shelf inside our freezer that houses space for the motor.
At first, looks like an inconvenience and it takes space away from the freezer itself, which, yes it does, but it also creates a very handy shelf that puts things at a better reach. I keep all of our ground beef there. It’s very easy to just reach in, grab it to get it thawing out for a meal.

 

 

 

Putting Your Freezer in Order

I place the basket that came with the freezer above the shelf with the frozen beef.

I put most of our boxes on the floor of the freezer. And then bins containing our categorized food on top of those boxes.

I put our pizza boxes along the side of the freezer so they’re easy to grab as well.

 

 

 

Let’s face it chest freezers aren’t the most convenient things to use on a daily basis, but they can be a real lifesaver when you want to stock up on food. So the goal here is to make them as convenient as they possibly can. If you put things in baskets and bins it makes it easier to move those foods out of the way so you can look at what’s underneath. That way instead of being a bottomless pit, you’re actually able to find and eat the food at the bottom of the chest freezer.

 

 

Refrigerator Freezer

As a side note, most of us have a regular refrigerator with a freezer component as well.

I use our refrigerator freezer to hold things that are open, such as a partially used bag of frozen chicken breasts, or our guilty midnight snack of ice cream, half a bag of french fries. It’s also a good place to store things like prepared meals.

I like to think of our chest freezer as holding the food that we have stocked up on and our refrigerator freezer to be holding the food that we have next in line to eat. That’s what makes sense to me.

 

 

Whenever you’re organizing a space, you need to step back and think through your daily habits and how your life works, and how you best function in that space.

Do what makes sense to you.

That way, after everything is organized, it will be easier to remember and stick to the systems that you put in place because they just make sense. They help you to function better in that space.

That’s what organizing is all about. Creating a space that functions at its maximum capacity and helps you feel more balanced and less stressed. You are able to get through your daily life more efficient and happier.

 

 

Check out my Organized Kickstart Plan for a step by step guide on how to get started organizing a space.

It’ll walk you through my process of going from cluttered chaos to organize balance in three simple steps.