Looking for the best way to organize a freezer drawer? Freezers can be so hard to keep organized because they just become a pile of frozen foods. When that’s the case, it’s almost impossible to find what you need. If you want to be able to easily access the foods in your freezer, it’s time to get organized. Learn how to clean and organize with the best containers and bins to keep everything in place.
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When we first moved into our townhome, one of the biggest purchases that we made was buying our refrigerator with a built-in drawer freezer.
I shared in this post about our refrigerator, so now I wanted to get into some of the details about our drawer freezer.
Before we lived in this home we lived in an apartment. The kitchen in that apartment was pretty basic and it came with a standard size refrigerator with a small freezer door at the top.
I always found it so hard to keep that tiny freezer space organized. It was so small that we could only fit a few essentials in there at a time. There was definitely no room for stocking up on frozen meats and vegetables.
Once we decided to build our townhome and we could finally choose our own appliances, I was set on buying a refrigerator with a drawer freezer.
What is a Bottom Drawer Freezer?
You can typically find bottom drawer freezers on refrigerator units that have upper french doors. Drawer freezers are great because while they may look small, they actually have a ton of storage!
They also allow you to store much larger items than the thin side-by-side refrigerator and freezer models do.
My favorite part about the drawer freezer has to be the pull out trays. Our drawer freezer actually has three layers – the bottom basket, the mid-level tray, and the top-level tray.
Yes, our freezer can hold tons of food. But, that also means it can hold more than I realize and can get cluttered easily.See the picture below for example:
Not exactly the organized freezer you were expecting, right?
How do you keep something like a drawer freezer organized? I thought I would share how I organize our drawer freezer and give you some tips for your own freezer.
How to Organize a Bottom Drawer Freezer
Purge
First, you will need to get all of the food out of the freezer. It’s so much easier to organize, especially in a drawer setup, when you’ve completely cleared the space.
Remove all of the food from the freezer and make sure to throw away any old food that has expired or isn’t good anymore.
Clean
Next, take an all-purpose cleaning spray and a microfiber cloth and wipe down the entire freezer. Make sure you wipe out of all the different trays and get crumbs and dirt off of the surfaces.
It can also be helpful to have a vacuum on hand to clean up lots of crumbs and possibly even food particles that have accumulated in the freezer drawer.
Use Organizing Bins
To maximize the storage space in a drawer freezer, I find it helpful to add in some organizing bins. This will help you to separate different types of foods and create zones.
These multipurpose bins (size medium) are the perfect size for the main basket area of a bottom drawer freezer.
Bins also enable you to remove frozen foods from their packaging.
I’ve found that the original packages for products just take up too much unnecessary space. You can fit more food in the freezer if you get rid of the packaging.
Tip: If you need the cooking instructions on the side of the package, cut off that part of the box and save only the instructions.
These wire bins happened to be the perfect size for our top-level tray. They can be used to hold smaller frozen foods or desserts. I originally bought them in the Target dollar spot, but you can find similar bins at the Dollar Tree.
Group Foods by Type
Finally, you are going to start putting all of the foods back into the freezer. But pay attention to the different types of foods that you have and the sizing of the trays in the drawer freezer.
We buy frozen ground beef and frozen chicken in bulk, so I created a zone for each using the bins.
In the bottom basket of our freezer, I grouped together all frozen meats and anything that comes in a large freezer bag.
The mid-level tray is much shallower than the other trays in the freezer, so I decided to store all of the frozen vegetables here. They lay relatively flat, so they fit well on this tray.
The top-level tray is perfect for our miscellaneous items like smaller packaged things, frozen fruit, and desserts. I also stored some quick and easy frozen dinners on the top-level for easy access.
Organized Bottom Drawer Freezer
Here’s the finished organized space. This is exactly how I organize our bottom drawer freezer.
After living with the freezer for a few years now, I’ve been able to learn what works for us and how we like to have things organized.
With some trial and error, I think I’ve created a good system that will help keep our frozen food organized and easily accessible.
Do you have a drawer freezer? I’d love to hear some tips and tricks for how you keep everything organized in the comments below.
PS: This is the model refrigerator that we have
Hi – great post! Which manufacturer and model do you have?
Hi Katie, This is the model fridge we have. It’s no longer sold because we bought it over 6 years ago. But there are probably similar models available now.
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