Lining Your Refrigerator Drawers With Bubble Wrap Can Help With This Common Problem

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While countless refrigerator organizational tools are available, most people don't have the time for super-involved fridge organization. The odds are you chuck your produce in the drawers when you get home from the grocery store, which is just as functional as having specific organizers per vegetable. However, leaving your produce in the drawer to roll around freely can cause some issues. 

If your drawers stick or don't roll out smoothly, it can jolt the contents around harshly, leading to bruising or busted vegetables and fruit. Sensitive fruits like peaches and tomatoes may bruise or dent even in smooth pulling drawers from regular rolling. Also, if you forget the vegetables in your crisper drawer and they begin to rot, the cleanup process can be gnarly and time-consuming. Your food doesn't have to spoil and leave juices or sticky residue behind, and bubble wrap may be the easy and cost-efficient solution to this problem.

Prevent bruised produce

The crisper drawer in your refrigerator does a great job keeping your fruits and vegetables fresh and, as the name suggests, crispy, but it isn't designed to protect them from damage. If you have a packed drawer, your produce is probably fine, but if you only have a few spare pieces of fruit, they can easily roll around and become bruised.

One simple and cheap hack to fix this is to line your crisper drawers with bubble wrap. This hack is completely free if you have bubble wrap lying around your house from recent packages. Simply cut the bubble wrap to the size of your drawer and lay it down. If you want, you could tape it down, but the weight of your produce should keep it in place. Subsequently, the bubble wrap should keep your produce in place. As a bonus, if your food rots, leaks, or leaves behind a sticky residue, or other messes, you can toss the bubble wrap and save yourself the time it would take to clean your crisper drawer.

Other options

If you don't have any bubble wrap or want a reusable alternative, there are also refrigerator drawer liners that you can purchase that achieve the same purpose. Like this Gorilla Grip liner from Amazon, many are sold in rolls and can be cut to size. They aren't solely limited to your crisper drawers, either — they can be used all around your home, including other drawers in your kitchen, pantry shelves, and even desk drawers.

There are many options for refrigerator liners, sold individually or in packs, for drawers and shelves, and clear or colored liners. This is also an excellent opportunity for decorative appeal in your fridge. Most of these liners are made of transparent plastic blend and are meant to be wiped off between uses. Some liners, like those from S&C Inc. on Amazon, are more opaque, machine washable, and have fun, decorative prints to spruce up the interior of your fridge.