Expanding on what sarakate said for soups/sauces etc what I was thinking about trying in my freezer was buying a new set of just the cheap GLAD tupperware stuff, or something else cheap that stacks well, and putting all my bagged frozen veggies etc in them. The bags of frozen foods are just a nightmare as they dont stack well and they slide all around and cause avalanches. Also might work for organizing "meal size" portions of meat (meal size being dependent on your family size, whatever quantity you usually use). Would also probably make less drippy messes when defrosting in your fridge if its in a tupperware already.

for the fridge If you have a lot of something, like yogurt, Make a single line of it all the way to the back of your fridge against one wall. Do this for soda and other individual serving items as well. It also helps make sure you are using the oldest one first, as you can always just replenish from the back.

My favorite tip is: Edit, edit, edit :)

Strangely, that's my favorite tip for a lot of things! Do you REALLY need four bottles of ketchup open at once? NO! Did you realize you had eighteen packages of chicken in the freezer? Probably not.

Edit!

To keep the mess above from recurring, inventory the contents of your fridge before you go shopping.

Keep a list of what *not* to buy in your wallet, so you won't get to the store and forget that you already have 11 jars of mustard.

For the freezer, I recommend putting in a few shelves. This one from the Container Store adds two shelves for me. It does mean you have to pare down a bit, but shelves definitely reduced the amount of digging I have to do!

My parents use long bins, about 8" high, in their freezer that act like drawers to organize their ziploc bags of cuts of meat and half-used bags of veggies. They pull out the appropriate drawer (labeled with type of meat or just "veggies"), splunk it on the kitchen table and rummage through to find what they need. It makes the back of the freezer accessible.

I am a big believer in treating your fridge like you do your closet - with boxes and bins. We are fresh and froze eaters (very little dry or canned goods) so our fridge has to be super organized. I invested in a series of clear plastic bins, filled them with related items (all individual yougarts, all frozen chicken, etc.), and clearly labeled them. When it comes to produce, as soon as I get home I bust out the knife and cutting board and cut everything into the sizes we use the most (diced peppers, quartered onions, sliced cukes). This makes it easier to store them and also makes healthy meals fast. I store all of these in IKEA glass containers which are designed to stack on top of each other. I can see everything really easily.

Good luck!

Try to find recipes that work around the stuff you have in your fridge and freezer that you haven't used. On your next shopping trip or two, only buy essentials - like bread, milk, produce - and force yourself to use what you already have (works for pantry items, too). When you've used up quite a bit, only replace the things you rarely use when you have a recipe that calls for it.

I've started using a grocery delivery service, and that's kept me from buying stuff on impulse that ends up sitting around in the refrigerator or freezer (save money that way, too).

This is totally random-- but I have been known to vaccuum out my toaster oven and the drawers in my fridge...

The suggestions are great, however, with all due respect, they treat the symptoms and not the root of the problem. The reader admits that she doesn't know what's in there or how long it's been there. Can you imagine anyone in a developing country admitting that they have no idea what food they have lying around? In this country we're blessed and cursed with an abundance of food--much of which ends up languishing in the fridge and then tossed in the landfill. And nobody really has a problem with it! I suggest that after cleaning out her fridge using all your great suggestions, that the reader sit back and consider how her fridge ended up looking like this, and what it says about her spending habits, values, and even health. It's an exercise I think we all could benefit from. This reflection can lead to all kinds of "aha!" moments, e.g., if I end up with lots of little odds and ends of ingredients after making recipes that use only some of them, why don't I try to use the rest of them by seeking out other recipes or learning to "cook by feel" to creatively use them up instead of wasting them? Or, instead of letting my veggies go to waste, I'll try to make a big pot of soup every week for the purpose of using up produce and other odds and ends that have no other place to go. I now approach food shopping and consumption very deliberately and consciously so that I never have this problem of an overstuffed fridge/freezer or food waste. It's very liberating, cheap, and healthy!

- We just went 8 weeks without buying any new meat as part of an effort to clear out our freezer. We also tried to eat down anything we had frozen (tortillas, bread, veggies) before we bought any replacements. It was a fun project and the side effect was we saved a lot of money/
- What Adamwa said: Stackable, reusable containers work well, especially for soupy leftovers like beans, stews, etc. I do this and it keeps avalanches and wasted space to a minimum; it also helps prevent freezer burn. Definitely go for square rather than round to maximize space
- When freezing stock, sauces, chili - measure into quart-size Ziploc bags and freeze flat on a rimmed cookie sheet. When frozen, you can stack them like a card file, either in a plastic bin (check Lowes or Container store) or in pull-out drawers if your freezer has those.
- Plastic bins are also great for condiments and little things that fly out of the door.
- Just like in your pantry, figure out a regular spot for each kind of item and stick with it as best you can. In our freezer, ice cube trays and leftovers go on the top shelf; meat goes on the next; bread and flat-bagged items in the lower basket, etc.

On the topic of consuming what you already have and wasting less (I completly agree with Quark and MWD) I have recently been loving Recipezaar.com's "recipe sifter" tool for helping me figure out what to do with odds and ends. You can filter by ingredient, course, preparation method, nutrition, you name it... Just sort by rating after a search and usually there are some fool proof ones right at the top.

http://www.recipezaar.com/sifter.php

When I cleaned out my fridge for this weeks assignment I was able to locate a delicious (and healthy!) muffin recipe on Zaar that used some past its prime carrots, bananas, and apples that weren't really fit to eat anymore raw. Plus an extra egg near expiration and even some neglected applesauce (to make up for the other 2 eggs called for). It was a great fridge cleaning recipe and tastes even better knowing it all would have just gone to the trash if I hadn't made them. Morning glory muffins if anyone is interested, its a great use what you have recipe:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Morning-Glory-Muffinsfor-the-Gym-Obsessed-209794

And soup is always a good way to use up everything else. If you vist my photos on the cure flickr group almost 1/4 of my freezer is used up with frozen already made soups, stocks, and stock ingredients. Its what I eat for lunch almost every day.

Wow – seriously embarrassing to see your mess laid out for public consumption.

I feel like I should start by saying that my fridge is on the small side – not a tiny apartment size, but definitely smaller than a full-sized one, and inefficiently laid out. That said – I still don’t want it to look like this. Also, these photos were taken mere hours after a grocery trip, so it was jam-packed. More so than usual. Just a disclaimer, not an excuse.

Anyway, I should update that I’ve cleaned a LOT of that out so far. I’ll post some progress pictures today or tomorrow.
I emptied and cleaned the whole bottom of the fridge – drawers, floor, and bottom shelf. Then put stuff back in some sort of order. I still have a veggie issue because, like akbuilt, we are mainly fresh eaters. I think I will put a plastic shoebox in there to see if that contains it successfully.

I also started on the door. Haven’t gotten far, but I tossed a handful of old condiments, which made a surprising amount of new room (there actually aren’t two soy sauces – one is a teriyaki which I tossed anyway because it was nearly empty). I cook a lot of different ethnic foods, so we have a wide array of condiments. Other than mustards (whole grain, brown, yellow) we presently don’t have any duplicates.

Freezer – I emptied, cleaned, added a shelf, and replaced sparingly. There were some bagged fruits and veggies that were freezer burnt, so they went, and a couple pieces of meat that were in there from pre-power outage when everything half thawed, so they went too. Even with getting rid of stuff, my freezer is pretty full. Now again, my fridge is small, which means my freezer is small. And like I said in a previous post, half used bags of fruits and veggies are my biggest problem. I like Michelle from montreal’s idea – I bet an ice cube bin would work as a drawer for bags. I may try that if I can dig one up.

I’ll post pics soon of my progress so far.

@Woodnymph - Eh, notice that I haven't put MY fridge and freezer anywhere near here yet! Thanks for being a guinea pig and bravely putting it all out there.

My fridge door looks something like yours; it's a good reminder to me to get going on it...

WoodNymph, just expanding on what Sara Kate said about condiments--I keep many of mine in my cupboard, rather than in the fridge--soy sauce, fish sauce, mustard (though mustard loses its potency faster at room temperature than in the fridge), etc. I would however recommend keeping your sambal olek in the fridge; the one I had in the cupboard developed mold!

Of course I can't see very clearly, but it looks like it's more a question of organization than overconsumption, contrary to what other readers thought. When I first moved in with my partner, the fridge was kind-of a mess, so I cleaned it out and organized it loosely by food type. Then I used some removable labels and attached them to the front of the shelves so everyone (we had roommates at the time) would be on board. Dairy was top left, leftovers were middle right, meat bottom left, and so on. Now it's just the two of us I don't need the labels anymore, but you may find them useful. I don't know how busy you are, either, but I've added a weekly fridge clean to the household chore list--I usually do it first thing Sunday morning, before I go shopping for the week. I take inventory of what I have and what I need so I don't end up getting duplicates.

All that said, freezers are hard. I still haven't figured out an efficient method for mine. I've mostly just stopped using it, except to freeze loaves of bread and our cats eat raw so their food takes up a lot of space.

Funny - the week before the challenge started, I went through the fridge and jettisoned everything that skeeved me. I also reorganized the freezer. So my before pictures are pretty much exactly what my after pictures would be. pardon me for skipping that step.

a month or so ago, I went through the pantry and put everything with its "group" - baking supplies together, tomato products together, "milks" together. I LOVE the china-marker idea and I have started using it.

(our appliance garage bit the ghost and I was moving things around to make space for relocated appliances)

Two years ago, I started writing dates on my spices. I plan menus around the spices if I have something I want to use up. (speaking of which, anybody who has a suggestion for using up TWO jars of dried ginger is welcome to speak up!)

Rianne - you mean crystallized ginger? if so, i use a large bunch (like a whole small jar) chopped up in a batch of gingersnaps. If you mean powdered, then i'd probably still make very gingery gingersnaps.

sjbreeze - i wasn't going to get into defending my spending habits, so i skipped over that. but yeah - my issue is definitely organizational. i threw very little away and made a ton of room just by moving things and combining like items.

I keep a list of items in the freezer on the fridge door. Since it's something that gets opened less often, it's easier to forget what's in there. The list usually slowly gets out of date when we've forgotten to cross items off, and then it's a good time to pull everything out and organize it again.

I also have several large plastic boxes that I use to consolidate similar foods to make it easier to pull things in and out.

Here are a couple of tips I use:

- Instead of buying small containers of yogurt, I buy one big container of plain yogurt and then mix in flavorings whenever I have a bowl (e.g., jam, agave nectar, bananas, brown sugar/cinnamon, etc.--most of these flavorings don't need to be refrigerated). The single big container of yogurt is cheaper and takes up less space. If I need yogurt on the go, I put some in a small reusable container.

- A great way to get rid of those condiment bottles and jars with just smidges left in them (too little to get out of the container easily, but too much to throw away) is to put some water in the jar, swish it around to dilute the condiment, and then dump it in the pot of rice or quinoa or soup or casserole I'm cooking. Instant flavor, a clean jar, and space in my fridge!

Like angorian, I keep a list of the freezer and fridge contents. I mark when I put produce, leftovers, etc in since I have a tendency (especially w/produce) to forget when I purchased/cooked something.

masking tape a sharpie marker is how I remember what/when things went in when I'm rooting around in the freezer.

My best tip for cleaning out the fridge is just so leave yourself space to put stuff back in! Because you know you'll have leftovers from cooking or eating out, new things, another container of milk or OJ before this one is quite gone, etc etc. We just cleaned out our fridge before this started, and it is really nice to have space to put stuff.

my fridge is done! I used a few of the suggestions given - shelves, containers, etc. So thanks! I submitted photos, so maybe you'll see the afters soon. Otherwise I'll try posting them to flickr this weekend.

I have a small fridge too, and three adults, two of them of the "throw it in the fridge any-which-way" school of thought. I routinely clean and re-organize and constantly remind my family to LOOK IN THE FRIDGE before opening yet another jar of tomato sauce. All in vain. Oh for the days when I was single. :-)

Two plastic bins in my fridge. One for "new" items that haven't been opened yet, but have a short shelf life (yogurt, sour cream, sandwich meat and cheeses).

The other for any open package or leftovers that must be eaten very soon (the above plus any leftovers).

I too suffer from condimentitis, which comes from trying to cook several different cuisines.

Back home, I used to get the special veggie bags from ZipLoc, the perforated ones, and would always prepare veggies into those bags (cleaning, sorting, readying for cooking or chopping), and found it really helped.

I have a problem with fruit storage -- have a tiny kitchen and tiny fridge and little room for storing ripening fruit. Any good fruit baskets or hanging baskets out there?

I definitely have a fridge cleaning problem... by the time I remember to clean it out, everything that needs to be tossed is really gross. We also have a clear garbage bag policy in my area to cut back on recyclable items in our landfill... so I can't just toss anything in plastic containers that may be really gross :( I have to empty it and then rinse it and ew. I get really squeamish about mold. I guess I should nip it in the bud and get rid of it before the mold appears, but I never remember.

I refuse to pay money for organizing bins so here is what I do. The Earthbound Farm spring mix comes in a really nice clear rectangular bin. I use them for all types of organizing. Before this I organized all of our art supplies in them. I just went and checked though and they fit well into my freezer. When I have 4 empty ones I will start organizing the freezer. I like the spring mix a lot so its not a waste of money for me. Most organizing bins cost about $5 and this costs $6 so its kind of like getting either free greens or a free organizer however you want to look at it.

Very useful post. I linked to it in my 30 Quick, Green and Frugal Meal Planning Resources list.