The Stackable $14 Kitchen Storage Gem a Pro Organizer Made Me Buy (Now My Fridge Feels 3x Bigger!)

When I finally handed over the reins to a professional organizer in my kitchen, a service bundled in with packing and unpacking during two (!) moves in a year’s time, some unexpected perks came with it. Besides feeling truly organized in the kitchen for the first time, well, ever, there are some small tweaks to how my husband and I do things that feel like a real win, thanks to the expert.

To wit: Thanks to organizer Kim Jones’ suggestion, we stopped storing fresh berries in the store containers, and started keeping them in a sleek little clear plastic basket with an ingenious extra layer that’s ventilated. Target’s $14 Brightroom produce fridge bin with a lid is so smart, I don’t know how we lived without it. At 4x7x10 inches, it’s the perfect size for our small fridge — and it’s made of BPA-free plastic, so we can feel good about storing food in it.

This gem is great for a few reasons: We’re pretty berry-happy in our home, and often have several kinds on hand. Strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries — they’re all on rotation to go in our go-to breakfast of Greek yogurt, berries, nuts, and muesli. There’s no need to have three or four individual berry containers taking up space, or stacked precariously, ready to accidentally come open and spill their contents. 

With one basket to store them all, the berries get dumped from their flimsy little containers directly into this one, then into its designated spot in the fridge. This makes breakfast time super simple, and my husband, who isn’t exactly passionate about organizing, has commented more than once about how much he likes this smart find! And having even that one little corner of the fridge organized is a motivation to try harder with the rest of it.

One of the selling points Jones shared when she recommended it was that this basket keeps things fresh for longer. That’s thanks to the insert that keeps berries from sitting in their own juices, and allows for more airflow. So when we catch berries on sale and stock up, we have a much better chance of using them all before they can go to waste. (Note: We don’t wash them until we’re ready to eat, which cuts down on introducing moisture to the mix.)

The Target bin is more aesthetically pleasing than the original berry containers, Jones says, and having a pretty fridge is definitely incentive to keep it organized. She also liked them because they’re easy to label — I haven’t graduated to the level of labeling containers in my fridge, but if we had a few of them, each dedicated to different things, I would totally try it. Aside from berries, it’s also great for veggies, herbs, and other moisture-sensitive produce.

If you’re looking for something slightly different than Target’s version, Amazon has one that takes it a step further with a removable colander-style basket. If I needed another one, I’d definitely go that route!

Buy: Brightroom Produce Fridge Bin with Lid, $14