A well-organized refrigerator is the unsung hero in a sustainable home. Orderly shelves aren’t just satisfying to behold, but they let you see what you have and what needs to be used up first — saving you time in the moment and cutting down on food waste in your immediate future. 

You don’t even have to be overly meticulous to reap the benefits: All it takes is a combination of foresight and intention to whip things into shape. 

Understanding your fridge’s temperature zones

Organizing your fridge doesn’t have to be a complicated game of Tetris: Every section, from the refrigerator door to the individual drawers and shelves, has a corresponding temperature zone and recommended use. Here’s the breakdown, from warmest to coolest. 

Inside the doors

Considering how often your refrigerator doors are open to the kitchen, it’s no wonder the shelves lining them are among the warmest spots you’ll find. It’s best to stock them with less perishable items like condiments, jams, and preserved foods. 

Top shelf

Your refrigerator’s upper shelves are the next warmest spot. Stock them with ready-to-eat packaged foods and leftovers. 

Middle shelf

The middle zone, as its name suggests, features a mid-range, evenly cool temperature that’s ideal for eggs and dairy products like milk, butter, yogurt, and cheese. Since this shelf is at eye level, you may also choose to stock it with snacks, drinks, and produce items that either don’t fit or are too delicate for the crispers, like packages of berries or cut fruit.

Bottom shelf

The bottom shelf of your refrigerator is the coolest zone. Reserve space here for highly perishable items, like raw meat or fish. What you place there won’t be at risk of creating cross contamination from leaks or excess juices dripping out of packaging onto other items.  

Crisper drawers

Crisper drawers are designed with vents to control airflow and moisture, and are best for storing fresh fruits and vegetables with varying needs and degrees of perishability. Most vents can be adjusted to low-humidity settings (open, to allow more airflow) and high-humidity (closed), and some even feature small icons denoting what should be stored where. 

How to organize your fridge 

Your fridge is more than a temperature-controlled box: It’s a reflection of how you think, and how you organize it says a lot about your relationship to food. This is exactly the case for professional recipe developer and cookbook author Casey Elsass, who explores the topic of fridge organization in his most recent release, Plant & Planet: Sustainable and Delicious Vegetarian Cooking for Real People. 

Though a well-organized fridge is essential to his work, he admits that even his shelves get a little hectic, especially when test-runs and special ingredients mingle with everyday essentials. A streamlined system is all the more necessary to keep the gears in motion — and can prevent impulse purchases from throwing things off. 

“I grew up in a clean-plate, grateful-for-what-we-have family, so any level of food waste stresses me out big time,” he says. “Knowing what I already have stops me from buying my fourth jar of mayonnaise or second bundle of rosemary when I'm out shopping. When it's time to cook, I have a rough mental checklist of what I should be using or, even better, what's making me feel excited and inspired.”

Here are Elsass’s top tips for organizing your fridge to minimize food waste. 

1. Set your fridge up for success

First up, Elsass recommends a few key purchases:

• Fridge thermometer. If your refrigerator doesn’t come equipped with one, grab a basic thermometer to make sure you’re staying below 40°F at all times (37°F is the ideal). 

• Glass or eco-friendly storage containers. You can also reuse plastic take-out containers if they’re handy. If you’ve got a more thorough restructuring in mind, home organization products like a lazy susan and clear, easy-to-stack storage bins can create dynamic levels for more breathing room and better visibility.  

• Masking tape and a permanent marker. Keep these close at hand in a kitchen drawer, and use them to label everything in your fridge with its name and a date.

2. Check in every few weeks

The only static thing about your fridge should be the temperature. Everything else is always in flux, and needs to be tended to on a regular basis. For Elsass, the catch-all top shelf is the problem area. “It's kind of the junk drawer of my fridge. It's where I stuff the odds and ends that I'm not going to be using frequently, but also don't want to throw away,” he says. 

If that’s you, make a habit of pulling everything out every few weeks to get a sense of calm going again. Check expiration dates, rotate older items to the front for easier accessibility, and keep track of any stragglers hiding at the back of your shelves. If you’ve got a build-up of leftovers, dedicate a night to clearing them out, either buffet-style or challenge yourself to repurpose or incorporate at least one item into every meal.  

3. Purchase — and prep — with intention

If your crisper drawers have a tendency to acquire geological-style layers of greens, vegetables, and various fruits, it may be time to check in with how you shop, and how you make your way through inventory. 

“Buy produce with intention and necessity, not just because you think you should be getting more color on your plate,” says Elsass. “This way you'll want to use the things you love without getting visually blocked by a tangle of radishes that are slowly dying.”

Light prep work, he adds, like peeling, slicing, dicing, and moving things to airtight containers instead of opaque produce bags, can also help you better manage your stores. The sooner those veggies get out of the crisper and onto the shelves, the sooner they’ll make it onto your menu. 

When you do discover produce that’s languished beyond safe use, take note. Regularly audit your track record of wasting food. Once you understand what you eat and what you tend to waste every week, you can root your shopping in that reality, rather than an aspirational one.

4. Have a go-to clean-out recipe

Whether it’s a kitchen sink salad or a smorgasbord of leftovers, it’s a good idea to have a go-to recipe or format to use up ingredients on their way out — and free up much needed space.

Elsass has two favorites: soup and tacos. “They're the two perfect blank canvases for using up any meats, vegetables, herbs, and condiments,” he says.

Using the FIFO method to make food last longer

Once you’ve organized your refrigerator shelves by temperature, there’s another step you can take to level up your efficiency — and reduce waste while you’re at it. It’s known as the first in, first out method, or FIFO, and it’s how grocery stores and professional kitchens organize their shelves for maximum visibility. 

The FIFO method is simple: The oldest items are rotated to the front, ensuring that they’ll be used before they go bad lingering in some unseen corner of the fridge. “If you can see it, you'll use it,” Elsass says. Resisting the urge to over-fill your fridge with duplicates will also help. “Do your best to keep the clutter to a minimum, so when you're staring into the chilly void you see fun possibilities instead of stressful chaos.”

That means a few extra minutes spent moving any remaining eggs to the front before loading in a new carton, or shelving new cartons of dairy behind any open ones. Have a half head of lettuce left? Move it out of your crisper into an easy-to-grab spot, and stock new greens in the drawer until you’re ready for them. 

Reduce food waste with Mill

Of course, even in the world’s most well-organized fridge, there’s always a possibility that some food will go bad. This is where Mill comes in. The Mill food recycler turns food scraps into dry, shelf-stable food grounds that can be used in your garden or sent to local farms. You can make an impact not only by keeping organic waste out of landfills (a worthy goal in its own right), but by decreasing the amount of food you waste overall. A recent Mill survey found that users generated an average of 20% less waste over time, which can save hundreds of dollars in lost food per year.

Sources:

1. Goodful via Elsass, C. (2021). Plant & Planet: Sustainable and Delicious Vegetarian Cooking For Real People. Penguin Random House.