How I Organized My Freezer Spur of the Moment

What do you do when you had a last minute thought in the afternoon to make yummy, awesome waffles for dinner and you don’t see the butter? Well, you look in the basement freezer. With no success you head back upstairs because you KNOW you have butter in a freezer somewhere. Well, this is what happens… All of the food in your freezer ends up on the kitchen floor and counter. This is how I organized my freezer spur of the moment.

And, guess what? No butter!! So on to plan B, let hubby make diner while I write a few blog posts until it is time for diner. 🙂 Haha! He is the best!

Every time I had to get anything out of the freezer I would get annoyed at the amount of food we had shoved in there. It was seriously ridiculous. I kept thinking that this was something that needed to be done sooner rather then later. We didn’t have any more space to shove food. I thought since everything was out on the floor I might as well go through it before I put it back.

At the time I was not thinking about this being a blog post, I had another idea for today. So I didn’t get any before shots. I got a few in between and mostly after. That’s okay. Just imagine the most food that you can cram into this freezer. That might give you a good idea. 😉

The top shelf holds our popsicles, cookie dough balls, some chocolate chips, and a few random things. The middle shelf holds our smoothly stuff. Most of the bags are in a plastic bin. The bananas and peaches were too big to fit so they sit snugly next to the tub.

The third shelf had the biggest change. I zip tied a hanging basket to the shelf above. This allowed me to create another “shelf”. In the basket I had loads of frozen meals in single serving bags. I also have parts of meals ready: cooked rice, spiralized zucchini, and pasta sauces.  Under my hanging shelf was enough space to slid a tupperware. Right now that tupperware has banana muffins. Yum! My kids will grab one for a snack and warm it up. Easy!

The bottom shelf/drawer holds our meat. It always has. I like having our freezer organized so we know where to find things. If I’m being honest I’m probably the only know who knows how it is organized and where to find what we need. Hope is not lost, I’ll keep trying to teach them my organizing ways. 🙂

I took a big bag of food we did not need and a lot of frozen breast milk to the basement freezer. A few things were thrown away. I try to not throw food away, I hate wasting food. But I really didn’t think we were going to eat a few of the really old things.

If this inspires you to clean out and reorganize your freezer that makes me happy! I wish you luck and would love to see before and after photos. You will love being able to see and quickly find the food you need. It will feel good to to spend 20 minutes simplifying something in your house.

I have the bug, now I want to organize another small space in my house. I also get to cross of the freezer on my master Simplifying (and here and here) list. Woohoo! Now I realize some of you will be thinking that my freezer is still a mess. And it may be. But here’s the difference:

• I can open the freezer without fear of something falling out.
• Food types have a place, which makes it easy to find and put away.
• If it was just me living here then I would organize it a little better. I don’t want to have to fight about where the frozen bananas go on the smoothly shelf. As long as they make it on the smoothly shelf then I’m good. I can’t control everything…

You might be thinking why is she going on and on about her freezer. I don’t really care to hear more about her freezer. And that is okay! So let’s talk about mental health for a minute. What happened when I was trying to find my butter? I got frustrated.

1. We only had one cub of butter in the fridge.
2. I couldn’t locate the butter quickly enough in my freezer.
3. So I had to go downstairs (not that big of a deal but it was getting close to 2 and I needed to let the dough raise for 4 hours).
4. There was no butter in the basement freezer.
5. I had to take a deeper look in my kitchen freezer.
6. I couldn’t see it so everything had to came out.
7. When I realized I didn’t have anymore butter I was more frustrated.

This whole process took about 5 minutes. If my freezer was organized to begin with then I could have taken 10 seconds to realize I needed to run downstairs to get more butter. It could have taken way less time and I should have been able to shrug it off.

When you have anxiety, depression, or ADD (I can not speak for other mental health illness but some may be similar) and have the need to control things around you, things can easily upset or frustrate you. So the situation with the butter shouldn’t have been a big deal. This time is wasn’t too bad. But, it was still a bigger deal then it needed to be.

I should have been able to look for, not find the butter and be totally fine. Instead I got annoyed that we didn’t have butter and then annoyed that it took long, and then even more annoyed because the freezer was a mess. It can be the little things like this that add up to set me off. Is anyone else in the same boat?

Sometimes we need to have things set in place so it doesn’t set off a trigger. One way I have found that my triggers don’t get set off is being able to find things that I need quickly. Also, having things be in their ‘place’ can also help. This is one major reason why I started (in July) my year or half year of simplifying.

It has been a sloooooow process with not much completed. However, the point is that I have made a plan, written my plan down, and am starting to work on my plan.

So if you have some of the same tendencies as I do then this is the important part…

1. Decide one thing that will make your life easier. (For me that is simplifying. We need less stuff, less mess to clean, and less crap to look through to find what we need. It is a BIG project. So I am doing a little at a time.)
2. Make a plan and or time line. (Write down what you want to do. Hang it up, look at is often, and chances are once you start one thing you will want to keep going.)
3. Pick something small that you can finish in a short amount of time and start there.
4. Hopefully, as you finish a small task then you will start a spark. That spark will hopefully want to keep going. Before you know it you will have finished that one thing that will make your life easier.
5. Now it is time to celebrate.
6. Lastly, pick something new that will make your life easier and repeat this process.

As much as I dislike this part of me, it is still a part of me. I need to own up to it. Instead of letting it drag me down I need to use it to make myself better. It will be one step forward and a few steps back. But, like I have said before, as long as you are making those steps forward YOU ARE MAKING PROGRESS! That is time to celebrate and know you can make some changes.

Remember how I organized my freezer spur of the moment is much more then just simply organizing my freezer. It is about having an organized space to help keep my mind and body at ease. It is having things in their place so I know where to locate them quickly. It is about taking back my life one small organization project at a time.

Xoxo

Stephanie