Organizing the Upright Freezer

Remember when I said how hard it was to finish a project. Well, this is one of those. I went the eighty miles to shop which is the least of the distances in order to do shopping around here. Oh, we have a couple small stores but that's it so if I really want anything, I have to put it on a list and when something on that list gets pressing off I go the eighty miles to a larger town.

I had gone to town with storage containers on the list. I'd seen this blog, wish I could give credit to who it was, but alas, I can't remember. On it, it showed this idea on how to organize your upright freezer. I've never had one before and this one is our daughter's. It's at our house and since we feed her kids most of the time and help with the groceries for their house, we decided to rearrange her freezer and ours to distribute the food more easily. Juice, nuts, and fruit were getting buried in my chest freezers.

So I picked up these containers with the holes in the sides for air flow to help me stack the food higher on the shelves without it tumbling out on to the garage floor.

They worked great but I didn't know how many I would need since I forgot to measure and the next time I went to Wally World as we call it around here, they didn't have any more. I substituted the solid containers that are laundry bins to organize the kid's laundry in and I'll removed then when the store gets a new supply of the containers in with the holes. As you can see I didn't even have enough of those to get the job done but boy has even this bit of change made a big difference. It also means I've got to rearrange once more when I get the new containers.
But now at least we can begin to utilize our food more efficiently. My goal for September is to get back on our financial budget, tracking our money more carefully and to get our food in order. That includes canning, shopping for case goods, and menu lists. I'm not stopping there as I've make a head meals, and side dishes to get done. School with the up to three trips a day to take or pick up kids, story time at the library, Daisy's (mini girl scouts) and min-4-H with whatever they are calling it now, will keep me and our daughter hopping. I don't want our food to become the convenience variety and hence, home will come every flu and cold bug that passes around the school. No, if I can just get a handle on things I think we'll be able to lower the number of sick days by simply pumping the vitamins and home-made food.

Not to mention the schedule and control of my world will keep me sane.


If you've got some great tips for this mom who spent fifteen years home-schooling and is a babe when it comes to handling the hectic pace of public school where someone else controls my day, then I'm all ears. At nearly 51, my energy ain't what it use to be. It will definitely have to be brain over brawn in the months to come.