The Number One Tip For Getting More Space Out Of Your Freezer

While it's super-easy to stick a package of food in the freezer to enjoy later, this set-it-and-forget-it mentality comes with one major drawback: Your freezer can easily fall into disarray. You might spend an entire afternoon organizing the freezer in the spring, but come summer, there are squashed boxes, misplaced veggies, and mystery meat strewn all over the place. Fortunately, there's a solution to the chaos.

To keep your freezer organized once and for all, whether you've got a chest freezer or French doors, it's time to switch up the way you store things. And in this case, "way" means direction, not method. To stay organized and make loads of room, keep freezer foods stored vertically. It's one of many lesser-known freezer hacks that can save you time and money — and space.

While most home cooks are accustomed to storing pretty much everything in the kitchen horizontally by stacking items on top of one another, that makes it difficult to remove frequently accessed freezer food and inevitably leads to a mess down the line. There's a reason bookstores and libraries store things vertically: You can quickly and effortlessly get books off the shelf without disrupting the rest of the inventory. Plus, you can see what you have in stock so you don't overbuy or forget what you have (or don't have).

To make this freezer organization system work, you have to store almost everything in your freezer flat. Rather than hoarding bulky bags of mixed vegetables or leftover soup, transfer food into a freezer bag first. You must choose bags meant specifically for the freezer, as these protect food from the frigid environment within, which saves your food from freezer burn. Then place your portioned food flat on a baking tray or freezer shelf and freeze it solid. 

To ensure you always have room, you can set aside a special spot for it. For example, you can get a SkyMall freezer bag storage system or (less expensively) a stackable inbox system like the Daltack three-tier letter tray. When your freezer food is rock-hard, you can transfer it to the storage area of your freezer, storing it vertically like a book or using special upright storage solutions like the YouCopia FreezeUp organizing rack. 

This is very similar to a sauce-freezing tip from Melissa Clark.  And it works because you don't waste precious freezer space with unnecessarily bulky packaging. Since you'll probably tend to use similarly sized bags for everything, frozen goods are generally about the same thickness, so your freezer will look nice and neat instead of a jumbled mess. It makes it much easier to see what you've got in there in the first place.