The Clever Organizing Hack You Need to Hear If You’re Getting a New Fridge Anytime Soon

Sarah Everett
Sarah EverettAssistant Editor of Home Projects at Apartment Therapy
I’m from Columbia, Missouri, a journalism town (okay, technically a college town with a big journalism school). It’s also home to one of my favorite things: True/False Film Fest, an international documentary festival. So I’ve been inspired by journalism/journalists/nonfiction storytelling for, I think, forever? I have an MA and BA in journalism from the University of Missouri and Belmont University, respectively. While in school, I worked for city magazines (and also started working part-time for AT!). I learned to love clever, voicey content that’s helpful, whether it’s recommending something to watch or read, helping you get involved in your community, or helping you decorate your home. As Assistant Editor of Home Projects, I cover DIY and design, and I organize the Before & After series. (If you’ve done a cool project, please send it to me!) Outside of work, I love doing the crossword, chatting with friends, drinking iced lattes, and going on little walks and sometimes longer runs. If there were a job that combined those things, I would do that. But for now, I'll do the next-best thing, where I pretty much do chat with friends, read, drink lattes, and go on little walks — with lots of writing, editing, and looking at cool homes mixed in.
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published Feb 4, 2022
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Credit: Gina Eykemans

If you’re the lucky owner of a brand-new refrigerator, you’ll want to find a way to recycle your old one — or donate if it’s still in working condition. But before you do that, you should consider mining it for organization tools, like one Apartment Therapy reader did.

In an effort to “reduce, reuse, recycle, and save money,” AT reader and organizing enthusiast Muna Bahra kept the drawers from an old refrigerator and used them to organize her new one. Hello, free storage bins!

If the temperature-controlled drawers in your fridge alone aren’t enough to keep things like cheese, deli meat, and produce organized — and they often aren’t — you’ll want to borrow Muna’s genius idea.

It’s a crucial last step you should take before kicking a fridge that simply doesn’t work anymore to the curb or a clever way to get the most out of an appliance now relegated to “garage fridge.”

Credit: Muna
Muna's old refrigerator

Muna’s favorite part of her hack is how her old shelves look almost meant-to-be in her new fridge’s center drawer (see below). But, she says, if they don’t fit in the drawers, you should still try to use them in your fridge’s upper shelving or in the freezer.

Credit: Muna
Muna's old drawers in her new refrigerator

Thanks for the tip, Muna!

This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: A Clever Organizing Hack Might Be Hiding in Your Fridge

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