Into the Depths of My Freezer

What a mess. I hate cleaning out my freezer. Not only is it time consuming, but also kind of depressing. I hate throwing away food, but sometimes that food gets lost in the recesses of it, only to be found frostbitten and tasting like the freezer.  I practically give myself a lecture while I clean it out, telling myself that I need to keep it organized and that I need to keep better track of what's in there so I don't keep buying things I already have. 

But how does one go about doing that? How do you keep better track of what's in there? Space is limited in that narrow freezer (someday, I'd like one of those deep freezers so I can freeze jam, homegrown produce and herbs, and an extra turkey when they're super-cheap around the holidays), so everything isn't always visible. Some things, out of necessity, have to be tucked in the back, three shelves down.  It's as the saying goes: out of sight, out of mind. And that, I'm sorry to say, often leads to waste. 

Then I read a great tip in the September issue of Family Fun magazine. One reader says that she uses a dry-erase pen and writes her freezer's inventory on the flat, white places, like the front of the ice box.  The answer I needed! A great way to keep track of things in a simple way. 

So, when I cleaned out my freezer on Saturday, I had a little notepad and pencil next to me and I wrote down all the frozen meat/poultry/fish I had since those are the items that I seem to overlook.  Being former vegetarians, we still don't eat a lot of meat at our house, so I forget about the meat we have in the freezer. I'm sharing this, fully aware that I may come across as somewhat spacey or absent-minded.  But it's been a crazy summer for us, so I'll take solace in that.

Anyway, I was amazed at what I had in the freezer!  There were extra packages of bacon, extra hamburger patties from a family barbecue I that I forgot about, wild salmon fillets (I'd found an awesome deal on it a few weeks ago, bought some, stuck it in the freezer, and forgot), and three packages of ground chicken.  I think I kept buying the ground chicken, intending to use it in a particular recipe, but then plans would change. I'd forget that I had it and I'd buy more.  Duh. 

Here's the after picture (like I'd post a before one. Yikes!):

{The lighting's kind of weird in the picture, I admit. The light burned out ages ago. Never bothered to replace it.}

I got a dry-erase marker and wrote down the items that are hidden out of sight -- mostly meat, poultry, and fish.  I also included my frozen homemade frosting -- whenever I make too much, I freeze it like my mom does. Then, like with other things, I forget about it and make a new batch of frosting. Oh yeah, I think this new, easy inventory system is going to work very well for me.

So take inventory of your freezer. You never know what you may find. Hopefully, it will be something edible.