How to Clean & Organize Your Fridge

1. Introduction: Hi everybody. I'm so excited that you're here to clean and organize your refrigerator. I promised this is gonna be fun. A lot of people have asked me for this course, so thats why I'm creating it. Our years of helping people get organized in their home and just simplify stuff around mealtime has been really important. You can check out our other forces about meal planning or decluttering and organizing any space. But this one, we're going to focus specifically on the fridge, how we clean it, and how we fill it up because it's something that it just happens kind of throughout the month. That seems start to look a little bit on the messier side. Maybe something gets stuck on the bottom of the fridge, something. So we're just going to talk about how you can maintain it, how you can keep it looking clean so that it inspires you to have fun in the kitchen, eat the things that you want to eat. And just in general, not make it a chore and make it something that's fun and beautiful. And that's why we're going to do this course together. 2. Class Project: So let's talk about the class project. Ok, this is killer. Vince is a motivation for you. We're gonna do a before and after. And there's three ways that it can be different, okay? Because not everybody's going to want to do this challenge the same way. So you can have a before picture of just the outside rich because that's a feed in its own. You can have a before picture of the fridge front on or you can have a before picture of just the door. So depending on how you're tackling this course, maybe you just wanna do one section at a time. That's totally okay. The reason why we're taking the before picture is because it makes the after picture just that much more impactful in is like a show-and-tell of all the work that you've done through this course and it's super fun when you do that before. You also know that that's probably the time when it starts to look like that, that you're gonna wanna do something like this again, sometimes I recommend that we clean our fridge everytime we loaded up the first truth for other people, maybe it's every couple of months. It's your own personal decision, but that's what we're going to share with each other. And I just want to let you know. It's okay to have it be messy. It's even better to have it the filthy and pull up stuff if you want, because it makes the after picture that much more dramatic. So please, if I can just let you know, it's okay to have mass because you're putting the work and now to make it look awesome. 3. What You'll Need: Okay, so we're gonna get to work. What do we need to have for this project? If you want to protect your clothes for many spills, I recommend getting yourself a little apron or wearing clothes that don't really matter to you. I also recommend for the cleaning portion. I don't use chemicals in the home other than vinegar and baking soda. And baking soda is really only used if there are some like really caked on messes and the bottom of the fridge, what can sometimes happen? Dish soap is generally with some warm water, another release and cleaner. So if you need to take that containers out and give them a clean, I use a thermometer in the front just to make sure that the temperature good, you want to have it at four degrees Celsius as, as a minimum full temperature for food. And here's my vinegar and water. It's one part vinegar, one part water in a nice spray bottle. And I just use old kind of microfiber cloth. You can use any kind of rag tradition boss that you have in the kitchen does matter. And then when we get into the actual organizing of the fridge, kinda maximizing that space, any kind of containers that you have, whether they be glass, plastic, anything reusable that you want have I do try and move towards a 0 waste lifestyle, but if you're not there yet, don't even worry about it. A full point is, but you're just using self-harm around your home, not going out and spending any extra cash. You don't have that around now. Okay. So now we're gonna start with the actual cleaning and organizing of our fridge. 4. Cleaning Outside of the Fridge: So welcome to how to clean and organize your fridge. First, we're going to start by cleaning off everything from the outside of the refrigerator. And the reason why we're doing this is to give a nice good disinfected white. But we're also giving you time to be able to maybe organize some of the things that are on the outside of your fridge. And if you have nothing on your fridge, you can just go ahead and spray down your refrigerator with a mixed solution of vinegar and water. So it's just equal parts, one part vinegar to one part water. So what we're doing is we're just making sure that we're getting all of our surfaces nice and clean. And if you have children's artwork or papers that you want to keep or file or put back up on the fridge. I just recommend that you take this time to sort and organize those now. Maybe creating a process where you ask your child which one they liked the best and that's what's going to go back up in the spot. You can see that after I've wiped everything down, I'm just giving everything a good cleaning and then putting it back in its place. Our daughter loves to play with magnets, so we're just keeping everything still there for her to play with and the nice pictures. And that is cleaning the outside of your refrigerator. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below. 5. Cleaning the Door: Okay, so we're about to clean the door of the fringe. Don't forget to take your before pitcher. And as you can see, we're just going to start by unloading everything from the fridge door. And once we're finished doing that, we're going to wipe it down with vinegar and water. Just as I mentioned before, you probably can't see here some of the thicker maple syrup stains are sauce stains that are on my fridge door. If you have something that's a little tough to get rid of, just put a little baking soda on at first and it should rub away. I keep the cloth clean as I'm using it by folding it in certain areas so that I'm not rubbing the same part of the cloth over the entire fridge door. But again, you can find the method that works for you. This is just like how I like to clean the fridge. So once everything's wiped down, I'm gonna take my time putting my things back, checking for expiry dates, making sure that if there's empty jars are kind of quarter, half finished jars, I might not be putting everything back, but I am doing my best just to make it look a little bit more organized by putting like with like, this can be something fun if you don't leave it for a very long period of time. So again, I like to do this for the refrigerator. Refrigerator probably once every month or every couple of months, depending kind of how how often or how many spills have been happening in the fringe. I like to put like unlike together. So you see me putting the butter and the chooses Up in the top drawer. Know the temperature of your fridge. Is your fridge cold enough to keep those things on your fridge door cold properly, and you can do that by using a thermometer inside your fridge. So I hope you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next. 6. Cleaning the Inside of the Fridge: Okay, don't forget to take that before picture. We're about to tackle the big sections of the refrigerator. I start by removing all the doors. And as you can see, I'm removing all of the items for my refrigerator. The reason why we do this is because it makes it so easy to clean when nothing's in your way. But it also ensures that you're moving through efficiently, nothing staying out of the fridge for longer than it needs. I do use a lot of counter space here. If you would find it helpful to use the kitchen table or maybe even a folding Stan table. You can do that. But yes, I removed everything out of it so that I'm given a clear space. So once this is all done, I'm going to take my vinegar and I'm going to spray everything down. And I'm like you said or like you saw sorry, on the inside than the outside of the refrigerator already. I'm wiping every surface down. If there's something a little tough again, I use a little bit of baking soda, fold my cloth over. I shouldn't say that. I do use probably about five cloths in the cleaning of my fridge. And that's because I find there's no sense in using the same one over and over again because sometimes hairs or messy stains and stuff like that can stick to your cloth and then you're just kind of wiping the mass down. So there's a little bit of laundry that happens after giving the house a good clean anyways, I put all those costs together and do that. So I'm even taking time to lift up the doors, wipe off those clean surfaces. And afterwards you're left with, you know, those nice clean shelves that really make it brighter inside the fridge. So it can be a really nice thing for displaying your foods. Once we're done cleaning and wiping down the entire space on the inside, we're going to wash the bins that you saw me remove in the beginning. So the reason why we do this is because often that's where our fruits and vegetables tend to decompose. And you'll see how I just take the simple steps as if I'm washing a bowl. It's just warm water with a little bit of dish soap and then drawing them to be able to replace back. 7. Returning Items to the Fridge: Once we've done the work of cleaning all the surfaces inside, we're going to do as we did with the fridge door. We're going to put things back. And as I put them back, I'm kind of sorting and storing them like with like so a lot of the prepared foods, things that you eat on a regular basis, if you have any leftovers, I leave those on the top shelf for things like mighta Heaney, my geeky butter, feta cheese, those things and the milk I'm putting in the middle drawer. And forgive me that this is moving quite quickly through it. But after I'm done sorting and putting everything away, which can look different for every refrigerator. Then we're going to move on to how to sort and organize the fruits and vegetables. 8. Washing the Produce Bins: Okay. So we've taken out the vegetable drawers. I'm assuming that you have some fees in your refrigerator. If you don't, you can just skip this video. I just use regular dish soap and warm water, not hot water or extremely cold. Colds hard on the hands, but excess hot water can crack your plastic. So just be really careful that you're using warm water and a gentle dish soap. So I give it a rents with the sponge and the dish water and then I dry everything wrote out. It's important to dry it out because you don't want any leftover moisture in those bins. I do use a piece of paper towel on the bottom as well because I find that it's a great absorber of moisture and also is a good indicator of when there's been a lot of spills or something sticky. It tends to make the cleanup process process last longer. Also, I will mention that I don't change them every time because they're not always really soiled. So it's not something that you're going to have a huge amount of waste from. When I put things back. I put them back in categories. So the drawer that I just finished, the first one I started on was more fruits. So again, I do my lemons lines, apples, fruits that are kept in the fridge. I don't do things like tomatoes or those kinds of things in the refrigerator because I like to leave them on the counter. They do better outside of the fridge. So here you're gonna see that I'm going to put back more bell peppers, lettuce and things like that into the store. I've gotta cauliflower there. And I will show you a little bit of prep those things as well, which hopefully will be helpful because they don't leave things in my fridge as I've stored them on the way back. I don't know about you, but I've also received food from people. So the plastic bag of Brussels sprouts that actually came from my mom visiting. It's not something generally that I would purchase in that way. But here I'm showing you the paper towel and just the dampness and also a little bit of that black from the fruits and vegetables. But yeah, so when you receive food from other people, it can be challenging. But one of the things that I try to keep up with is just giving it a little bit of prep, making it easy to use and storing it in either the fabric or container ready to be used. Because that's going to help me be able to put it into meals a lot easier or planned to put it into meals. I do like to do meal planning and I do have another course that's all about creating a meal plan that you can see. But anyways, we're just about finished here. So I hope this is helpful and I hope that you find that when you're doing this kind of technique of going through, you're seeing the things that you also have left. So at the end, when you've cleaned your fridge, you have a good idea of maybe something that you're gonna be preparing or cooking in the future. And that's it in a nutshell for cleaning those bins. So I hope you enjoyed watching and we'll see you in the next video. 9. Putting Groceries in the Fridge: So now we've seen how to clean the refrigerator. Simple, basic, get everything out of your way, wipe it down, and then reload. But what do we do when we come home on a weekly or bi-weekly basis with our produce, the food we are going to eat, how do we put it away and how do we make it easy? One of the things that I really like to stress is removing stickers right off of your produce. And that is a one-step way of eliminating frustrations as you're going to go and use something. Everything's already been prepared. There are certain foods that you cannot wash to put away. For example, sensitive proofs, something like a berry. And they do come in their own little plastic container if you buy them and they're not in classic containers than giving them a quick rinse, not the raspberries, blueberries, and other fruits. And putting them in their own little container can keep things easily stackable and maximizing the space and then refrigerator. But we're going to start by removing plastics from our produce. So for example, a lot of her cucumbers right now because they're not in season are coming in plastic. So I like to take all of that off excuse me, take that off before I put it away in the refrigerator. Cucumbers flight to be stored alone. So when I'm going to store them in the fridge, I'm definitely going to be storing them in with the hardier vegetables, such as carrots and Callie flour. Because again, they don't really like to be with fruits and because it tends to ripen them faster. And they're going to have some graphic shared with you about what likes to be stored, where and where's the best placement for them? Tomatoes, for example, should never really go in the fridge. I understand why sometimes people do put them in the fridge, but they actually last longer and tastes better if we leave them on the counter. We're going to do with our bananas. And are tornadoes were going to put them in my designated spot. We have a little fruit plate that we keep filled up right now there is some pairs, a kiwi and some oranges. Because again, those fruits don't need to be stored in the refrigerator to stay nice. Mango, again, if you're wanting to ripen the fruit, meaning it's not good to eat right now because it's a little bit green. You definitely want to leave it outside of the fridge. Avocados can last longer in the refrigerator, but again, are going to take spreaders and ripen faster if you believe them out, which is what I wanna do. So I'm going to put those and vegetables as well. Zucchinis, again, is another sensitive food that tends to create a little bit of food mold every now and again, if stored with the wrong moist products. So you want to keep it in the CRISPR or an area in the fridge that is going to be a little bit drier, which is why I put paper towel at the bottom of my vegetable doors because that helps absorb some of that moisture. So we're gonna put the zucchini cucumbers away in the fridge. My cucumbers tend to live with carrots celery because we have them on a regular basis and the zucchinis also mole in the same spot. The reason why I put those together is because of their shape. So if it's convenient and you have what's a long vegetables such as carrot celery, cucumbers, zucchinis, a plant's ate plants tend to like to sit out, not be in the refrigerator. But if you're going to eat them quickly, then I recommend that you can keep them in the fridge. I'm going to leave my out on the counter because again, it doesn't need to be stored in the fridge to last a long time. And same with my pineapple. Pineapple in fact, does better if you're trying to write than it up, which you can text on the bottom does better out on the countertop. You just want to keep an eye on it after a few days, make sure that it's not going right to quickly. Plus it looks pretty that varies, as I said, the raspberries, you don't want to wash right away. They come in their own containers which allows you to stack them, maximizing the space on your shelves in your fridge. I'm gonna go ahead and store them on the top shelf because they're going to be easy to grab and easy to read. It's what I want to eat them. Break by my yogurt for breakfast in the morning. I bought some cheese. Again. I have a designated area. Some people eat more cheese than others. Some might have extras. So that's where this drawer might be more of a deli meats and cheese for you. For us its fruits and we just store are cheats in the top shelf of are, of, are covered. But for every person that's different, once this is caulk, I use bees wax to wrap over top of it and then elastic and it stays fresh for quite a long time. Now the things that come in plastic bags or need a little bit of extra pair. These are Brussels sprouts. What I'm going to do because they're tiny and I don't want to keep them in a plastic that tends to hold in waster and create rock. I'm gonna get a little plastic container that will sort them in my fridge. Plastic or glass. All works. I'm not going to put the lid on because again, I don't want to hold the moisture in. This is just to keep everything all in one place and keep it easily accessible and ready to use. I could maybe even do a half container, but I've got this window and I'm going to store it in my vegetable crisper on the bond. You might not be able to see this, but it just sits nicely right inside my vegetable tree, ready to be. The last three things I'm going to talk about is again, when you get these larger sized vegetables that Callie flower, as you can see, it's starting to darken because it's being kept in the plastic bag. Us keep this as an example for us. I'm going to take the bag off. I'm going to cut and prepare it very roughly and put it in a plastic container because the likelihood is. Faster and enjoy it with less prep, easy to use it whether I'm roasting it, adding to a zoo. It's just way easier to take the plastic off and it will also help preserve at longer so that it doesn't spoil. So I quickly came the buffer Vega graph my compost. You get rid of all of the stem. And again, this is getting more into the prepping side. But when you come home, I don't know if any of you feel the same way. If I don't do some of this early legwork, it tends to mean, but I'm not going to use the items as I intended. Or it's just more work come dinner time when I actually want to use it. So I haven't spent a lot of time, but I've removed all of my leaves which tend to cause a little bit of mold. I'm not going to wash it because I'm not using it. Yeah. And I am just going to set it into my guts, that container broken apart. And then again, I'm able to stack it and use it how I see pit with a little bit of force. And now I can put it in my fridge. Ready to be used and easy to grab. For earth. Other than basal, they are very moist and in the refrigerator they tend to go bad. So right now I have Dillon parsley. You can store these in jars with a little bit of water on the bottom. But my preference is to use a tea towel. And I also like to do this with heads of lettuce by storing them and wrapping them in a tea towel. You keep them moist, you're in and you protect it from their refrigerators ability to dry in soccer coach, the moisture from, from leafy greens. You just have to remember which one the parsley is in which one that deal is. And then I set that into my CRISPR pressure. It's make a big difference in the wintertime. And then again, we are part of a CSA so we get spinach and arugula. I don't like to keep it into the bags because again, I don't use it as often. So I get a larger size container that is again stackable and I empty these bags into the reusable if I can get in there, we'll again, I don't watch that stuff until I'm going to use it, especially the wriggle out and this finish because when it's wet, it tends to mold and go soggy a lot faster. And this so be good for a week to two weeks depending on how often I open up my container. Beautiful spinach from a local, local garden where we live. And these containers helped me maximize the space because they're square and stackable. I'm able to then put things on top of themselves that are clean, easy as you can see here. And I can really maximize despite the, the space here, you can do is play with the orientation or the location of your shelves. Because again, depending on what you and your family eat, it's going to look very different for everybody. But here you can see I have prepared foods on top. If I'm ever defrosting things, I always use a plate below it. I've got empty real estate space here that I can put things if I if somebody comes over with something nice, this is easy access, high usage, stop. And again, it keeps your fridge looking clean, easy to get at. And hopefully this helps you be able to maintain and clean your fridge when you're bringing sat home. 10. Quick & Easy Food Safety: So one of the reasons why I'm a little bit concerned about just making sure that I mentioned a little bit about food safety is because I worked in restaurants, grew up in hospitality and have a lot of background training and food handling and safety. One of the biggest things I want to take in what you to take away from this course is just making sure you use the basic labeling structure when you are putting foods away in the fridge or in the freezer and all your label needs to have is a description of the food and the date in which you put it on. And the reason being is that it can help anybody in your kitchen and be able to quickly decide whether something is too old to be eating or how long it's actually been in a specific place. And then it also helps you keep track of the foods that potentially you don't really remember when you cooked it. No more smell test, worrying about those things because foodborne illnesses grow underneath food mold isn't always the first indicator and we don't want anybody getting sick. 11. Congratulations!: Congratulations, you made it to the end, and I am so glad that you did. I really hope that you got some value from learning how to clean and organize your fridge. This is just one way to do it and this is how I do it in my home. I showed you how I prepare vegetables, showing you how we put them away, how we store them. But again, take it with a grain of salt, what you eat and how you store it might be a little bit different from my fridge. So I hope this was helpful. Please, please, please post that before or even just the after in the project so that we can talk about it, talk about different ways to store. And again, looked to the resources. If you have any curiosities about specific kinds of foods and where their best stored caps. How to do that? Please let me know in the comment and discussion section and I will be sure to answer. All of your questions have been cleaning your fridge and we'll see you in the next one.