This Brilliant Hack Adds a Shelf’s Worth of Space to Your Fridge
Thanksgiving is a lot of full-ness — a house full of family and friends, full tummies (eventually), and oh-so-full refrigerators. More than once, I’ve come home from my big Thanksgiving shopping trip with too much food to fit into the fridge and had to resort to using a cooler for storage! I’ve also had issues finding room in there to hold all the stuff as it’s assembled, before it’s cooked. And, somehow, I’ve also had trouble finding room for all the leftovers.
That’s why I’m particularly proud of this hack that I figured out, all by myself, a few years ago. At the time, I was making lasagnas — one for my family, one for a friend who’d just had a baby. I assembled them, but wasn’t ready to bake them just yet, and when I went to put them in the fridge, I realized I didn’t have nearly enough space in there for both. With some finagling, I was able to get one in, but that was it. So I poked around my cabinets and came up with the solution: I stacked a sheet pan on top of the casserole dish that was already in there, then placed the second casserole dish on top. Easy!
After doing it that one time, it’s become a go-to trick whenever I have big, prepared foods to store in my fridge, like the green bean casserole and yams with marshmallows that are staples at our Thanksgiving dinner. I can stack casserole dish on top of casserole dish, or fill the sheet pan with all sorts of other items (little bowls, big bowls, bottles, whatever needs a home). Although it makes it just a little hard to get stuff out when I need it, it makes it extra easy to get stuff in and that’s what’s most important.
How do you make the best use of space in your fridge when you’re cooking for a big holiday like Thanksgiving?
