A Complete Guide to Refrigerator Organization

Messy fridge making it impossible to find what you need when you need it? Tired of finding Tupperware full of stuff that’s growing fuzz? Maybe it’s time to rethink how you store stuff in the old ice box. Good thing we’re here to help! Keep reading for AppliancePartsPros.com’s full guide to organizing the contents of your fridge.

Start With A Scrub Down

This probably isn’t what you wanted to hear, but the best way to get a fully organized fridge is to start with a thorough cleaning. Empty the whole thing, toss expired foods, and thoroughly clean the shelves, walls, drawers, and gasket. We have a whole guide that’ll walk you through a serious deep cleaning for your fridge on our blog. Check it out!

Use the rest of our guide to determine how best to put things back once your refrigerator is dry and ready for restocking.

Zoning: Not Just For Urban Planning!

Obviously, your fridge and freezer should be maintaining very different temperatures, but did you know that your fridge’s fresh food compartment isn’t all one temperature, itself? There are warm and cool zones in your refrigerator by design, and you’ll want to take advantage of them if you’re looking to maximize the life of your leftovers. 

Do note, depending on the style of your refrigerator and any additional features it may have, the exact layout of temperature zones will vary. Don’t worry! We’ll be covering the most common refrigerator zones and what to store in them in this guide.

Be Aware of the Back of the Fridge

Top to bottom and front to back, where you put your food in your fresh food compartment matters. This isn’t just about potentially losing that tub of sour cream behind boxes of leftovers, either. There are two main things you’ll want to keep in mind when it comes to storing items front-to-back: 

• The back of your refrigerator is going to be colder than the front, so keep this in mind when sorting out where everything goes. Put something there that doesn’t belong, like a leafy vegetable, and you may find your romaine lettuce transformed into a solid iceberg by the time you need it, even when stored on the top shelf. 
  
• The vents that circulate air from the freezer into the fresh food compartment are in the back. Those vents are vital to maintaining a proper temperature in your fridge, so avoid blocking them with tall items like milk jugs or soft drink boxes.

The Upper Shelves

The upper shelves of your refrigerator’s fresh food compartment are going to have a fairly consistent temperature. If you have a refrigerator with the freezer on top, you may find that this section is colder than the set temperature. If your freezer is on the bottom, it may be slightly warmer. No matter what style you have, you generally want to follow these rules when storing items on the top shelf: 

• It’s at eye level, so take advantage of that. Put leftovers, opened containers, things you use frequently, stuff that’s closer to its expiration date, and healthy snacks – anything you’d prefer your family munch on first – on the upper shelf. 
• Don’t store anything you need to defrost up here, especially frozen meats. You’re more likely to wind up with a mess that spills down to the lower shelves. 
• Fresh herbs are safe to store here, just make sure that they are toward the front and not pushed to the back, where they can get too cold and wilt.

The Middle Shelves

Another spot with a consistent temperature, the middle shelves are there for holding just about everything else – eggs, soft cheeses, yogurt, milk, and deli meats can all go here.

The Bottom Shelf

The space just above your crisper drawers is the perfect spot to defrost frozen meat and store things like seafood. Just be sure to put the meat in a container that will catch anything that leaks out as it thaws, otherwise you’ll find yourself with a very unpleasant mess to clean up.

The Crisper Drawers

Chances are your refrigerator comes with at least one or two drawers near the bottom of the fresh food compartment. Whether you call those things the veggie drawers, the crisper pan, or something else entirely, they all serve the same purpose – humidity management for your produce.

All crisper drawers function in roughly the same way, but their effectiveness can vary wildly. Fancier refrigerators will have gasketed drawers with adjustable vents that allow you to select the humidity of the drawer. In more basic models, the crisper drawer is nothing more than a plastic bin. If you want to learn more, have a look at our quick rundown of exactly how crisper drawers work.

• If your refrigerator’s drawers do not have any sort of adjustable vent on them, assume that they are high humidity drawers. If they have adjustable vents, open vent is low humidity, closed vent is high humidity.
• Produce that is prone to wilting, like spinach, lettuce, and fresh herbs, should be stored in a high humidity environment – that is, with the crisper drawer’s vents closed.
• Ethylene-sensitive fruits and vegetables, like cauliflower, citrus, and eggplant, can also benefit from a high humidity environment.
• Apples, peaches, pears, avocados, and other ethylene gas-producing fruits and veggies will last longer if they receive airflow. So, if you need to refrigerate them, these sorts of fruits should be stored with the vent open or not in the crisper drawer at all.
• You can store meat in the drawer to defrost, too!
• Be sure your crisper drawers are in good shape! Cracks, chips, and breaks can allow humidity to escape, reducing their effectiveness.

The Door

Your refrigerator door is both the warmest spot in the fresh food compartment and the zone that’s going to be experiencing the most temperature fluctuations.

• Dairy on top – your fridge probably has a spot specifically for butter. Make sure any tray doors are shut when not in use to avoid the contents flying around as the door itself is opened and closed.
• Don’t overstuff the shelves. They’re usually made of plastic, entirely or in part, and can crack and break easily if overloaded.
• Store condiments, bottled sauces, and preserved foods like pickles and olives in the door. Just keep in mind that they can be heavy!
• Don’t store perishables in the door. Eggs and veggies are going to do better inside the refrigerator compartment.

Have a door-in-door refrigerator?

Here are some door-in-door specific tips:

• Soft drinks, juices, and chilled wines go great here. You can adjust the shelves to make sure they all fit.
• Use the door-in-door compartment for things you use frequently, whether that’s soy sauce or ketchup, orange juice or soda. Move the condiments you don’t often use to the inside door to avoid clutter.
• Don’t store anything in the door-in-door compartment that you wouldn’t put in the refrigerator door of a standard refrigerator. Leafy greens, cheeses, and raw meats should stay in the fridge.

The Chiller Tray

Not all refrigerators have chiller trays, but for those that do, expect temperatures that are colder than the rest of the refrigerator, but warmer than the freezer. Foods stored here for long will eventually start to freeze, so it’s best used for meats that you plan on cooking in the next few days. Buy a package of drumsticks to fry up for the weekend, but it’s only Wednesday? Pop them in the chiller tray to save space in your freezer.

The Freezer

Your freezer should be kept consistently at or below 0° F (-17° C), and is best used for long-term storage of frozen veggies, meats, and meals. Here are a few freezer storage tips:

• Use a shelf riser to create more space if you don’t have any shelving in your freezer. This will let you store more stuff.
• If you buy big packages of meat – say, a large pack of pork chops, pre-pattied burger meat, or drumsticks, break up the package as soon as you get it home and freeze a meal’s worth of meat in individual containers. This’ll both save space and lower the risk of your meat spoiling or otherwise getting tainted by multiple thaws.
• Flatten out bagged goods like steamable veggies or homemade sauces. Once they’re fully frozen, they’ll stack more easily and take up less space than if you store them as a lump.
• A fully-packed freezer is a happy freezer. Unlike the refrigerator, which can suffer from being overfull, a packed freezer has an easier time maintaining its frigid temperatures.
• Store water in zip lock baggies to help keep temperatures down and as a quick DIY ice pack in case you need it.
• Don’t store fresh fruits and veggies in the freezer unless you plan on making a smoothie or ice cream with them. The texture and taste will be off once they thaw. Don’t store soft cheeses or whole eggs in the freezer for similar reasons.
• Don’t store fresh herbs in the freezer by themselves. They’ll wilt. Instead, you can put them in an ice tray with a neutral cooking oil and freeze that to help preserve them.
• Don’t freeze carbonated beverages – you’ll probably wind up with a mess.

Our Final Thoughts on Fridge Organization

• Strike a balance between a full and empty fridge to maximize efficiency. While a cramped refrigerator may experience issues with warming, an empty one will have to work harder to maintain a constant temperature – meaning both fluctuations and more energy spent. To keep your fridge running well and drawing less power in the long run, aim to keep it full and well-organized.
• The top of your fridge is potential storage, too. If you’ve got the space, you can use the top of your fridge as a mini-pantry for things like cooking oils, pet food, shelf-stable snacks, and cereals. Just make sure that what you store up there isn’t completely blocking airflow to the back of the refrigerator.
• Break down the stuff you buy in bulk. Storing it in smaller, reusable packaging that’s better suited to your refrigerator or freezer can help you to better conserve space. Making sure food is stored in meal-sized portions for your family can also help to cut down on food waste.
• Move the old stuff to the front. Keep nearly empty containers near the front of the refrigerator so you don’t crack into a new package when there’s something still left in an old container.
• Maybe it’s time for a change? Having a refrigerator that’s right for your family and your home can have a significant impact on your electrical bill and the lifespan of your fresh food and leftovers. If you find that your fridge is a bit too small for the amount of food you need, it may be time to upgrade it to a larger size. If your fridge is always empty, maybe you need something a bit smaller.
• Want more storage tips? Check out our guide to making the most out of a small kitchen – it includes a lot of great tips for maximizing available space in smaller refrigerators.

Want to know more about how to get the most out of your refrigerator? Check out our blog and our YouTube channel. We’ve got tons of tutorials for cleaning, upkeep, and repairs that’ll make even a stressful fridge malfunction seem easy-breezy. And if something does go wrong, you can rest easy by ordering genuine OEM replacement parts from us at AppliancePartsPros.com. They’ll be at your door in as little as two days!