Putting Some Order in the Chest Freezer

Over the summer I made a ton of  freezer meals to stock up the freezer for when school started again and I want some easy meals for dinner.  I wanted to find a way to keep the freezer organized so I didn't lose things at the bottom.  About a year ago, I created a list that hangs on my refrigerator.  It is on a dry erase board which makes it easy to erase something when we take something out or write down something that was added to the freezer.

However, I am getting sick of having to dig through everything to find what I am looking for.  I have decided to try and use plastic milk creates to organize things a little.

I picked up four different colors thinking that the colors could aid in the organization.  I am a little worried that over time, the plastic will crack from the cold, but we will see how long it lasts.  My freezer already had three baskets, so this gave me a total of seven different categories I could divide my freezer into.  Here are my categories:

• Beef
• Chicken
• Other Meat (Pork, Sausage, Hot Dogs, etc.)
• Bread & Pizza
• Potatoes
• Other Frozen Food (Cheese, Veggies, Fruit, etc.)
• Ice Packs

I was only able to actually fit 3 of the 4 crates in the freezer.  That is okay because now I have one that I can use to transport things from the freezer to the refrigerator on Sunday's when I do my weekly meal prep.  There was space between the crates at the bottom of the freezer where I placed my frozen bread and pizzas instead of putting them in a crate.  

The color coding did help.  On my list on the refrigerator, I put the color of the crate and what is it in.  Therefore, when my husband needs to find something in the freezer, he will know what crate to look in.