How To Organize A French Door Refrigerator
Whether you’re an avid home cook, a busy parent, or just love to snack, a disorganized fridge can put a damper on your kitchen habits. French door refrigerators are one of the most popular styles of this appliance. Knowing how to organize a French door refrigerator will go a long way to keeping your life calmer and more productive (and you won’t waste food).
Remove all expired and spoiled foods from the fridge. Determine where you plan to store your items in your French door refrigerator. Keep things such as condiments and other low-perishable items inside the fridge doors. Items that need the coldest temperatures should be on lower shelves. Keep leftovers and beverages on top shelves. Sort fruits and vegetables into different crisper drawers.
An organized fridge is an essential part of any kitchen organization project. Luckily, with a few simple steps, your French door refrigerator can become uncluttered and super functional.
How Do You Arrange Things In A French Door Refrigerator?
When choosing where to store food in your fridge, it’s important to arrange items in a way that makes the most sense. You should consider how frequently you use certain things. If you have young children in the home, also consider what items they need to access (and which ones you don’t want them to be able to reach).
Different areas of your fridge have various temperatures, so it matters where you store your foods. The lower shelves tend to be cooler than the upper shelves, and the back of your fridge is colder than the front. The inside of the refrigerator doors is the warmest spot in the fridge. Therefore, make sure to consider how cold certain food items need to be to maintain their optimal freshness.
These are a few tidbits worth considering when deciding how to organize your fridge. Now, let’s dive into the steps you can take today to arrange your French door refrigerator and make it your ultimate kitchen assistant.
1. Clean Out The Fridge
Nobody wants to waste time organizing items they don’t plan to keep. Go through your refrigerator and toss any old, spoiled, or expired items. Take this opportunity to wipe down shelves, storage bins, drawers, and the inside of the doors.
2. Organize The Refrigerator Doors
As previously mentioned, your refrigerator’s interior has different temperature zones. Start with the doors of your French door fridge. These side-by-side doors make accessing various items a breeze, but they’re also the warmest places in your fridge.
Therefore, use the doors of your refrigerator to store condiments and less-perishable foods like butter, olives, certain sauces, and juice pouches. When placing items, keep the ones you access to the most frequently within easy reach. For example, if your kids get their own drinks, keep these on the lower door shelves.
3. Decide Where To Put Foods On Fridge Shelves
Avoid storing items that require colder temperatures on the door. Instead, keep things like milk, eggs, and prepared food on the interior shelves.
The shelves toward the top of the refrigerator are warmer than the lower shelves. Therefore, meat and dairy should go toward the bottom of your fridge, while leftovers, sodas, and similar items can go toward the top.
4. Keep The Right Foods In Refrigerator Drawers
Refrigerator drawers are popular places to store produce. It’s best to store fruits in a separate drawer from vegetables as they require different amounts of humidity. Your crisper drawers typically allow you to set the temperature. Or they may provide a slider to increase or decrease the amount of airflow into the drawer.
Likewise, your fridge might have a special drawer for cheese and meats, often called a deli drawer. This separate space allows you to set a certain temperature for these items to keep them fresh. Always leave enough space inside the drawers for proper airflow. Avoid cramming them full of products.
5. Use Organizing Items In Your Fridge
Many people try to organize their fridges around the shelves, drawers, and bins that come with them, and no more. But there are tons of handy storage ideas out there to make your French door fridge an organizational masterpiece.
Use clear bins to corral similar items, making it a snap to take out ingredients in one go. Furthermore, let’s face it; the back of the fridge is where perfectly good food goes to die because it becomes invisible. Tiered shelves are great for keeping items in sight instead of things getting lost behind other products.
A lazy Susan makes it simple to access items on deep refrigerator shelves without moving a bunch of things out of the way. Under-the-shelf hanging baskets are perfect for keeping smaller items within reach without wasting valuable shelf space.
6. Eat This First
One of the biggest drawbacks of a disorganized fridge is how much food you end up wasting. If you organize your French door refrigerator, it will go a long way to help you use all your food (and save money). But to make things even easier, store items expiring first toward the front of your fridge.
You can even go one step further and label a clear bin “Eat First.” When you’re meal planning, concentrate on the ingredients in this bin to make your meals before you reach for other items.
7. Label Foods
Don’t make yourself remember things you don’t need to. Why try and quiz yourself on how long that pack of sliced turkey has been open? Write the date on it when you open it, so you know how long it’s been there.
This quick step will significantly reduce the amount of food that goes to waste. Do the same thing with leftovers and items you place in the freezer.
The Benefits Of An Organized French Door Refrigerator
Once you organize your French door refrigerator, you’ll discover all sorts of wonderful benefits.
- You find what you’re looking for easier.
- Clear bins and organization mean you can grab things more quickly. Therefore, you’ll save energy since you’re not standing with the refrigerator door open as you rummage through piles of food.
- You won’t waste money buying food you already have or that you forgot about.
- Likewise, you don’t waste food.
- An organized fridge means your kids can get their own snacks easily, so you don’t have to worry about it.
- Meal planning, creating a grocery list, and preparing to cook all become much more straightforward.
Organize Your Refrigerator To Make Life Easier
If you want to organize your French door refrigerator, it doesn’t take long once you put your mind to it. It’s all about being intentional about where you keep various foods and keeping things visible. Store items that don’t need the coldest temperatures on the fridge doors. Place items that require the lowest temps on your bottom fridge shelves.
Once you know where you want to keep your food, get the proper storage containers. Lazy Susans are great for accessing items on deep shelves. Tiered shelves keep things in the back of the refrigerator visible. Under-shelf baskets maximize your interior fridge space, and clear bins help keep similar items together and easy to grab.
Start by cleaning out your fridge and tossing anything expired or spoiled. Wipe everything down, then organize your food according to the above tips. Now, whenever you open your fridge, you’ll be excited about what’s for dinner instead of pulling your hair out and running from the room.
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Stacy Randall is a wife, mother, and freelance writer from NOLA that has always had a love for DIY projects, home organization, and making spaces beautiful. Together with her husband, she has been spending the last several years lovingly renovating her grandparent's former home, making it their own and learning a lot about life along the way.
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