Chest freezers- how to organize?

[Anonymous]

It seems like the food storage equivalent of a money pit.

It becomes impenetrable, uncharted territory. All that good food only sees the light of day after an electrical outage and then it is wrecked.

Suggestions, please?

[Anonymous]

We tripped a circuit breaker on ours a few months ago and didn't know about it until we opened it and everything was no longer frozen and we had to toss it all. We moved into this house this spring, and I'd never had an extra freezer like that, and was thrilled to have it, but then I got gun about filling it after tripping the circuit and losing all that food.

I'm now not bad at making sure I go down there to get stuff and use it. We keep frozen pizzas in there, which we eat at least once a week, and my big thing of frozen berries from Costco is in there, which I go to a couple of times a week. Putting things in there that I will go to forces me to look in there and I often think "Oh, I could make this, let me take it out of here," or "I need to plan to use that, how am I going to do it."

Basically, I don't worry as much about losing everything in there, if I am regularly using the stuff up. If that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

We got it at the beginning of covid when they were saying have 2 weeks of food and there were shortages of some things. Our refrigerator was smallish.

It's a pit in that I try to organize, DH panics and rummages and rearranges. It's mostly full of the big bagels he orders, a little bread, some chicken and fish. Maybe ice cream, special meats.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I think it’s only a good idea if you’re using it for temporary storage. Like if you have a side of beef in there and you’re working through it methodically over a year, or you’re prepping for a big event. You don’t want to just have a pile of random things in there, and you don’t want to be adding things over a long period. But you can use labeled totes or baskets to help.

[Anonymous]

We have the Costco upright freezer with drawers. I monitor it's internal temp as part of my smart home setup.

It holds stuff that is too big to keep in the refrigerator freezer and stockpile of blueberries from the garden.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have the Costco upright freezer with drawers. I monitor it's internal temp as part of my smart home setup.

It holds stuff that is too big to keep in the refrigerator freezer and stockpile of blueberries from the garden.

Hmmm. This is great. I'm the pp who had the circuit trip and didn't know it; this would fix that problem.

[Anonymous]

We gave away the chest freezer that came with the house and got an upright for this very reason.

[Anonymous]

Buy freezer organizers and use them. I have separate sections for ground beef, steak, pork tenderloin, pork chops, and chicken breasts (among other items). Put new items at the bottom and move older items to the top. I cook at least 4 times a week, which means I open the chest freezer at least every other day. I think I would notice if the food wasn’t frozen.

[Anonymous]

This is OP.
Thanks all. I’ll look for freezer storage to better understand how it doesn’t get frozen to the bottom too.

Seems like regular rotation is key.

The last time we lost everything (spouse’s expensive meat etc.) my first question was, “are the garden blueberries still there?”

Off topic: I rinse and dry those, then freeze in trays till I have blue ice marbles, then store in freezer bags.

Eventually we will probably get an upright. Maybe I won’t have to clear laundry and sports equipment off it when I want to cook from the stash.

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

Colored coded baskets? Stackable would be even better. In my case, I would need a separate basket/container for beef, chicken and pork.

[Anonymous]

PP ^^ Amazon has these.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQKGF9RW?tag=bg1-806226-20&th=1

[Anonymous]

I bought those Amazon baskets. Caveat: if you have a small chest freezer like we do (maybe 7 cu ft, biggest we could get delivered down the stairs) the baskets leave you with less space, even stacked. At least they did fir us. I found other uses for them and just have big ziploc bags as organizers. 😧

[Anonymous]

We use labeled bins. For each bin, I try not to add new stuff until I've used up what's in there. So if one has chicken pieces (breasts and thighs), I don't buy more of those until I use the ones I have. I don't buy stuff just because it's on sale and "we have room in the freezer".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I bought those Amazon baskets. Caveat: if you have a small chest freezer like we do (maybe 7 cu ft, biggest we could get delivered down the stairs) the baskets leave you with less space, even stacked. At least they did fir us. I found other uses for them and just have big ziploc bags as organizers. 😧

I have a combination of baskets like those and also large clear plastic bags (half bushels). The bags make it easy to store all the frozen fruit and veggies together, then just pull out the bag to see what's there. Like pp I garden so freeze a lot of blueberries, strawberries, huckleberries, corn, tomatillos, etc.

[Anonymous]

We just use items from there regularly - desserts and bread that we don’t eat daily. Then weekly or twice/week meal prep.