Today, we’re sharing with you a complete fridge overhaul that The Tidy Abode put together for a client who was determined to revamp her eating habits, and that started with the fridge! She was frustrated with having a meal plan in place, but she felt like her fridge was holding her back.
Besides spending money on unhealthy takeout and produce that would sit for weeks then go bad and had to be thrown away, she was also wasting tons time looking through her overstuffed fridge for her healthier items!
Before we started, we identified a few problems:
- Lots of sauces in tiny containers scattered all throughout the fridge.
- Takeout containers, some which were clear but others that were not.
- Items in the wrong place! Greens up top, condiments on the bottom.
- Wrong containers! Eggs were piled together and we even found two cracked eggs that had fallen out of the back of the bin.
- Frequently eaten items that were hard to access, plus even more food and drinks were hidden away!
To get everything organized, we went through the same steps on our step-by-step guide on How To Organize Your Fridge.
Here’s what we did to address each problem:
Purge, purge, purge! About 90% of the sauces and most of the takeout was either bad, expired, or not what the client wanted to include in her future diet.
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Zoning! Once we knew what was going to be kept, we made sure everything had its correct place. Most of the condiments and sauces that were kept ended up on the door of the fridge.
All of the tall beverages were put on the top shelf to minimize stacking and narrow containers were used for the yogurt, eggs, and soda cans on the more shallow shelves. We used this set of bins which came with a soda container, two sizes of regular all-purpose bins, and the egg containers below.
As you can see, we put the greens and the fruit in large bins on the shelves instead of the crisper drawers. The client said that one of the problems she had was tucking the healthy food away and forgetting to eat it for snacks or to cook with the healthy ingredients before they’d end up going bad.
The best solution was making them more visible in bins, which worked out great! We placed the greens in the veggie bin on the shelf, because it would immediately catch her eye as soon as she opened the fridge. That way she would remember to use them in whatever healthy dish she planned on making. Then after she finished making her healthy stir fry, she just placed the finished prepped meals into the same bin! All the fruit for snacks went into a bin together making it easy to grab.
I’m happy to report that during our follow-up call, she said she did not need to throw away any produce after we implemented our system! Normally, I would put fresh produce into the crisper drawers, but this client’s need to stick to her meal plan meant the best solution for her was seeing all of her healthy foods right away.
Lastly, we took the time to label the fridge even though with clear containers it is not necessary. You can see the pre-labeled fridge below and it still looks beautiful! However, the client wanted to be able to stick to her plan, so we ended up making some custom vinyl labels for each container.
As I mentioned, at the follow-up appointment, our client was super happy with the systems we put in place. The goal she had of getting her healthy meal plan in order was helped by The Tidy Abode getting her fridge in order first.
Mission accomplished!
