Your freezer is a filing cabinet, not a cave

I used to keep my freezer the way most people do. Things went in on top of other things, and the bottom layer became archaeology. Every so often I would excavate and throw out something unidentifiable from an unknown year.

One change fixed it, and it is embarrassingly simple.

Freeze flat, then stand it up

Fill the bag, press it flat on a tray, freeze it solid. Once it is frozen it becomes a rigid tile, and tiles can stand on their edge.

Stand them upright in a drawer or a box, spines out, like books on a shelf. Now every single thing you own is legible from above, and taking one out does not disturb the rest.

Flat also thaws far faster. A one inch slab thaws in a fraction of the time of a fist-sized lump, which is the difference between a plan and a takeaway.

Label like you will forget, because you will

Two things on every packet: what and when. Not just what.

Everybody believes they will remember. Nobody remembers. A bag labelled only soup is a small mystery, and mysteries do not get eaten on a Tuesday.

I write on the bag itself with a marker, and I add one more word when it matters: spicy, for two, needs stock.

Group by when you will use it, not by what it is

Categories like meat, vegetables and bread look tidy and are useless, because you never think I want vegetables. You think I need dinner in twenty minutes.

Three groups work better:

• Dinner, ready. Complete meals. Thaw and heat.
• Components. Stock, sauce, cooked grains, roast vegetables. Things that become dinner with one addition.
• Raw. Meat, fish, bread, butter.

Keep a list on the door

A scrap of paper and a pen. Add when you put something in, cross off when you take it out. Thirty seconds a week and it removes the need to open the freezer to decide anything.

This is the least glamorous advice on this site and it is the one that saves the most money.

Eat the freezer once a month

Pick a night, cook nothing new, eat only what is in there. It clears the archaeology, tells you what you over-freeze, and it is usually a genuinely good dinner.

Questions

What is the best way to organize a freezer?

Freeze everything flat, then stand the frozen packets upright like files so every label is readable from above. Group by how you will use it, meaning ready meals, components and raw ingredients, rather than by food type.

Why should you freeze food flat?

Flat portions freeze faster, stack upright so you can see everything you own, and thaw in a fraction of the time a solid block takes.

What should I write on frozen food?

What it is and the date, at minimum. Add one detail that helps you choose later, such as how many it feeds or whether it needs stock adding.

More: batch cooking that still tastes good on Wednesday.