How to Manage Your Fridge Efficiently

You probably open and close your fridge at least ten times a day, using it to store everything from fruits and vegetables to meat, eggs, bread, milk, cheese, chocolates and yesterday’s leftovers. If you want to optimize the use of your fridge, follow these simple guidelines to manage your fridge more efficiently.

Don’t overstuff it

A lot of people cram food into their fridge, stuffing produce into the crisper and trying to make one more jar fit into that little cranny at the back. This is not a good practice, since overfilling your fridge prevents the cold air from circulating within it. This hampers its ability to cool, reducing its efficiency and causing your food to spoil.

Plan your meals

To avoid overfilling your fridge, plan your meals for the next few days and shop accordingly. Try to avoid impulse buying and stick to the plan as much as possible, so that you don’t have too much food. Keep an eye on the expiry dates of the various foods; try to use up the perishable items first.

Practice first in, first out

First in, first out (FIFO) is a management technique that applies to situations like these. It means that you should use up the items that you bought first, before you use the ones that you bought later. So if you bought cauliflower yesterday and potatoes today, you should use up the cauliflower first, since you bought it earlier and it will spoil if you don’t use it up.

Decide what to eat

Try to avoid opening the fridge door multiple times. Instead, decide what you want to eat before you open your fridge, or if you don’t know what it contains then open it, have a look and decide quickly. Some people remove all the food, heat it up, eat some of it and return the rest to the fridge. This is a bad practice, since heating and cooling your food again and again causes a lot of bacteria to grow in it.

Label your food

Many times people open a bag of flour, use some of it, transfer the rest into a jar and put it in the fridge, without bothering to label it. The next time they need to use it, they can’t tell if this jar contains regular flour or cornflour, and since the two look so alike, there is no way to make out which is which. Similarly, a lot of spices can look similar, so it’s better to label them, otherwise you’ll be wondering if this is the regular chili powder that is spicy but does not color the food, or if it is Kashmiri chili powder that is not very spicy but gives the food a red color. Better not to find out the hard way!

Get a fridge management app

Nowadays there are several fridge management apps to help you use your refrigerator more efficiently. Right from planning your grocery list and keeping track of your expiry dates to suggesting recipes that you can make using the contents of your fridge (using the older items first, of course) these apps take care of everything.

Source: healthmeup.com