Hi everyone.
I'm Alejandra from Alejandra.tv.
And welcome to my fridge organizing video.
So in this video I'm gonna share with you how to organize the fridge so you can find
what you're looking for and also maximize the freshness of all your food inside the
fridge.
But first, if this is your first time watching any of my videos and you're just getting started
on your journey to getting organized, there's a link below to help you get started for free.
Alright.
So right behind me is the fridge and I'm just gonna share with you how it's organized and
what you can do to organize your fridge if you need to clean it out.
Alright.
So the outside of the fridge I just have two important things.
I have my exercise tracker that I use whenever I exercise.
And then I have a list of foods that Ed and I came up with together based on things that
we should be eating, as reminders on things to buy, and things to make and stuff.
And those two are important so they hang out on the front of the fridge.
Alright.
So let's look inside.
On the door of the fridge, the door of the fridge is gonna be more of a warmer section
of the fridge compared to the back bottom, which is the coldest part of the fridge.
So what you want to keep on the door are condiments.
Things that don't need to be really cold.
You don't want to keep milk, yogurt, or any other kind of dairy.
And so for condiments, what I do is any condiment that we use frequently, keep that toward the
front, right here.
And then any condiments that we don't use as often, but still gets used, goes in the
very back.
And as you can see, there's only one of everything, with the exception of the mustards, which
they're all different types of mustards.
But what you want to do is only have one of every condiment open at a time.
So you don't want to have two of the same mayonnaises open at a time or eight peanut
butters open at the same time.
Which I did see when I started becoming a professional organizer.
One time there was eight peanut butters open at all the same time.
Most of them were all the same.
And so you want to avoid doing that.
Just open one at a time.
Once it's finished, go grab another one.
Open it, recycle the old one and put it in the fridge.
So just one at a time.
And then keep your bulk ones in the pantry, in the cupboards, or anywhere else you keep
bulk stuff in your house.
Alright.
So that's that door.
Let's look at the other door right here.
So this door has ... This is more of the condiment overflow door.
If there's not enough space here, condiments go here.
But there's plenty of space right now.
This compartment right here is kind of a weird shaped drawer.
So I keep all of our extra nuts because nuts last longer in the fridge or the freezer.
There's chocolate chips, there's raisins or craisins, and then there's chia seeds.
So this is nuts and seeds.
Right here, same thing.
These are great.
So for anything that you eat often.
So Ed and I eat hemp seeds and chia seeds almost every day, I have these little pourers.
You just take it out and you just drizzle some on your cereal, or your salad, soup,
whatever it is.
It's nice and easy.
You don't have to mess with a bag, keep a spoon inside.
I do the same thing for our chia seeds which you're not gonna see it right here because
I don't have the container with me right now.
But chia seeds I keep in one of those glass sugar shakers that you see at a diner that
has a little spout that opens and closes.
It works excellent.
You just drizzle some on whatever it is.
And it's just really nice and easy.
You don't have to fumble with opening a bag, grabbing a spoon, and all that stuff.
Alright.
So juice goes up there.
So let's look at the rest of the fridge.
So this is the fridge right here.
So let's talk about the shelves.
The coldest part of the fridge is gonna be the bottom of the fridge back.
Bottom back is always gonna be the coldest part of the fridge.
So if you think about the air inside of your house.
The cold air always falls so if you have a basement it's always going to fall to the
basement.
While the hot air is gonna rise to the top level of your house.
Same thing with the fridge.
The hot air is gonna rise to the top and be in the top shelf right here.
So anything you have that needs to be really cold like milk, yogurt, dairy, anything else
if it's in that category, keep it toward the back of the fridge.
So in the very back is yogurt.
There's some keifer here.
This isn't dairy milk, but that hangs out right there.
And then there's more dairy back here.
It's all the way in the back so it's nice and cold.
Alright so if we go to the top shelf right here, leftovers.
What you want to do with leftovers is keep them in the front of the fridge nice and visible
so you see them, you remind yourself that they're there, and you eat them, and you don't
let them go bad.
You don't want to put your leftovers in the very back covered where you don't see them.
So keep them nice within eyesight and within reach.
So I like to keep all of my leftovers in glass containers because of BPA in plastics.
It just doesn't feel good to put food in there.
I don't always do that right now because we're in a temporary situation and I don't have
all my glass containers.
But when I do, these are the ones I use and I'll put a link below.
What you can do is put a label on the front of your leftovers.
If you want to write the date of when you made something.
So if you freeze leftovers and then you go to take it out and put it in the fridge, if
you look at the date and make sure it's still good.
That's just a helpful way to know how long something has been sitting or how long it's
been inside of your fridge or freezer.
And these containers, they're leak proof, they have nice tight lids, and they're just
great glass containers.
Alright.
Up here I'll show you that later.
The middle section, really nothing special.
Down here, so ... Actually let's talk about this first.
Let's talk about the drawers next.
So the drawers, the drawers in your fridge, they're not just drawers for storage.
They have a purpose.
They're for fruits and vegetables.
And if you look closely on the drawer, you should see a setting for high humidity and
low humidity.
And basically what that means is ... One second.
Just turn this off.
Okay.
So what that means is high humidity is gonna keep all of the air inside the drawer.
So when you turn the setting to high humidity, it's gonna close a vent that's not gonna let
air come out of the drawer.
As opposed to low humidity, when you set it on low humidity, it's gonna open a vent, allowing
the air to come out of the drawer into the rest of the fridge.
So in the high humidity drawer, which is this drawer right here.
You want to keep your leafy greens, your herbs, anything that has the tendency to wilt, you
want to keep that in a high humidity environment.
So the best way to tell is ... I feel like it's a little bit confusing.
But the best way to tell is you can either just look up high humidity foods and you'll
find that it's mostly vegetables.
Or when you go to the grocery store, look at the way ... Look at how the farmer is packaging
the foods.
So for example, here are sprouts in a clam shell container.
If you noticed, there's no holes in any of this container.
So all of the air is being contained inside here.
This is a high humidity environment inside this clam shell container.
So that's a sign that this is a high humidity ... This goes in the high humidity drawer
of your fridge.
Same thing for your spinach.
If you notice, your spinach, when you get them in these containers, there's no holes.
There's no holes in the entire thing because you want to keep the moisture locked into
there.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, low humidity allows the air to come out of the drawer into
the rest of the fridge.
So for example, if you think about all of your berries, so like the strawberries, blueberries,
blackberries, any kind of berry that comes in a clam shell container, they're always
gonna have holes in them to allow the air ... And really it's allowing fruits as they
ripen, they release a gas.
And so you're getting that gas out of the clam shell container.
But they have holes.
And so this is low humidity allowing the air to flow out of it.
So next time you go to the grocery store, just be mindful.
Look around.
Look at how everything is being packaged.
And that's gonna give you a clue on how to store things.
So I just keep one drawer as high humidity, the other drawer as low humidity.
Pretty much vegetables in here, fruits in here.
And yeah.
That's how those drawers are organized.
For herbs, what you're supposed to do to maximize the lifespan of your herbs is you're supposed
to when you get home, take the herbs out of the bag, and trim off an inch at the bottom,
and then put them in a little bit of water like this.
I do not always do this.
I did this when I was organizing the fridge and I actually really enjoy doing it.
So I may continue doing it.
But I don't always do this.
So I can't always say that I do that.
And the asparagus, the same thing.
When you get the asparagus, you're supposed to trim off half an inch or an inch.
Put them in a little bit of water.
And it's gonna maximize how long they stay in the fridge.
I don't always do this either.
But this is what ... This is how to maximize your asparagus.
Alright.
So that is that.
Aright.
So I try not to use plastic wrap.
And a great thing you can do is use something called ... This is a wrap made of beeswax.
It is excellent.
I've been using it for almost three years.
This one is new.
But I'm gonna show you one that's almost three years old.
And I'll show you what it looks like.
It's excellent for anything that ... Like any leftovers or something that doesn't have
a lid or something like that.
This one is about three years old.
This wrapper.
And it just sticks so well.
I'm gonna show you something else in a second.
But it's really easy to wash.
You just wash it in cool water with some soap.
It dries really easily and it works really well.
Alright.
So that's right there.
I did want to show you one other thing.
Instead of using plastic wrap.
I got this tip from Ed.
He did this ... He was doing this when I met him and I thought it was so cool.
So if you do want to use plastic wrap, you can always just take a plate and cover it.
Cover your bowl just like that.
It's great if you don't need a tight seal and you just want to cover something.
It just kind of keeps the air out and keeps other things out.
So I thought that was really cool.
And if you don't have a muffin on your plates, it creates ... Oops.
Let's turn the light back on.
If you don't have a muffin on your plate and you just have a plate over a bowl, it also
creates a double self.
So now I can stack something else on top of here because it's a nice hard surface.
So great way to maximize space.
And then since I'm telling you about all these other reasonable options, I thought I'd share
these silicone muffin liners that are excellent for muffins and cupcakes.
They just peel really nicely off of the muffin.
And you can pop them in the dishwasher.
They're really easy to hand wash.
And you don't have the waste paper or foil muffin liners.
Alright.
What else?
Oh, this bottom drawer right here.
So if you notice, there is vents.
So this is gonna be ... This is gonna allow the air to leave the drawer.
So I just keep ... There's butter in here, there's cheese, hard boiled eggs.
So for hard boiled eggs, you could separate them from the other eggs.
You can label them with a smiley face or something or just put them in a different spot.
Anything that I chop up like extra lemon or onion or something, I just put it in the small
section and any time I'm going to reach for something, I just check if there's any leftovers.
And I don't usually use plastic bags.
I try and minimize my plastic.
But right now we're in a unique situation so we're doing the best that we can.
Alright.
And onions, I keep onions in here.
Onions, they're best stored outside the fridge.
That onion's not gonna last long before I use it.
So I think it's okay in the fridge.
It's all about doing the best you can.
So when it comes to cleaning the fridge ... Let's just go ahead and close that.
When it comes to cleaning the fridge, you can get into the habit of cleaning your fridge
every two to four weeks.
I most of the time clean the fridge right when I get back from the grocery store.
Before I put the new groceries inside, I'll just wipe down the shelves.
It doesn't take that much time.
You can either take everything out of the fridge if you have a lot of stuff or you can
just go shelf by shelf.
So a lot of times I just start at the top shelf, move those things to the middle shelf,
clean the shelf, put everything back, put the middle stuff on the top shelf, clean that
shelf.
So nothing's actually leaving the fridge.
Everything stays inside.
Get in the habit of doing it every two to four weeks is a great idea.
When you notice something has gone bad, go ahead and pull it out immediately as opposed
to just shuffling it around inside the fridge.
And when it comes to organizing the fridge, they make all kinds of organizers for the
fridge.
My opinion is that because the stuff in the fridge fluctuates so often, like you go to
the grocery store every week and the contents changes in and out and stuff, I find that
it's actually better to have less organizing bins in your fridge because the stuff fluctuates.
Because when our stuff fluctuates, our system has to fluctuate as well to keep up with it.
And to make it all work because it's all like a puzzle.
So I find less is more.
But do what you like, do what you find works for you and your family.
And I think that was it.
That was it.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
If you're looking for more support on your journey to getting organized, you can visit
my website Alejandra.tv for more tools and training on getting organized.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon.
Bye.