I have a small top freezer which used to look like a dumpster fire. I had a problem of randomly stuffing things into my freezer. And once something got shoved to the back it was never to be seen again. I couldn't find anything and would often buy duplicates of things I already had thus taking up even more room. I freeze a lot of fruit for smoothies and cocktails. I also have a stockpile of different types of flour since I don't use them very often but it goes bad at room temperature in 3 months. Then I always keep some ravioli and tortellini in the freezer for days when I don't feel like cooking. Plus I always keep frozen broccoli and peas to add to any pasta meal. Then I signed up for a monthly smoothie delivery service and had no room in my freezer to add them.
I read The Home Edit's book (before they were on netflix) and decided to organize my freezer. I do recommend watching the show, each episode has two projects - one a famous celeb and the other a regular person. So you get a nice mix of fun big scale projects to watch and some more attenable ideas for a smaller space. I bought my trays from amazon but they make their own trays that they sell at the Container Store which were sold out when the show was released.
I started by taking out everything from my freezer and organizing it by type. I bought these large bins for the top shelf and these small bins for the bottom shelf.
I decided to move all my flours to the freezer door, that makes it easy to see all in one place and will prevent me from buying duplicates again. I have all-purpose flour, almond flour, tiger nut flour, oat flour, flaxseed, wheat germ and lucuma powder. Yes, I do tend to use all of that at least on a monthly basis. A lot of my baking seems to involve almond flour but then I also have recipes that ask for 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour so I have to keep that on hand. As a vegetarian, I use flaxseed in place of fish oil for omega-3 vitamins, been using it since high school. I throw it on top of oatmeal or in protein balls. I also use it in baking that call for an egg as a substitute. Lucuma powder I use to sweeten oatmeal since it's low in sugar.
You can really see what you have in a small space when you organize by food group. I'm a huge Stasher bag fan and use them instead of ziplock bags since they are reusable and come in a range of bright colors. I added labels to each one so I know what's in them. The first one you see there is pear juice. I froze pear juice in a giant ice cube tray to use for future cocktails. I also freeze heavy whipping cream like that because I'm always encountering recipes that just need 1 tablespoon of it. The middle bin, you'll see on top frozen watermelon which you can't get in the winter. I use that to make smoothies thick. The bottom containers have frozen veggies and tortellini. With this system, I'm able to get a monthly box from Daily Harvest and buy some frozen foods from Trader Joe's. Before I literally had no space.
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