Say Goodbye To Your Messy Fridge. Keep It More Organized With This Storage Tip

A messy fridge is one of the most expensive things you can have in your house. According to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a family of four wastes nearly $3,000 each year on groceries that go straight from the fridge to the bin. In many cases, the food goes bad before anyone gets around to it. A lot of the time, though, it's not intentional. When the fridge is cluttered, some items get pushed behind taller containers. And as the saying goes, out of sight is out of mind.

How then do you arrange your fridge in a way that's efficient? The truth is, finding organizing hacks for a clean and tidy fridge is the easy part. The hard part is staying consistent. However, you'll find that the single most transformative storage tip is this: Pick a system and stick with it.

It helps to think of your fridge like a library catalog. You could organize by food type, by how often you use something, or by expiration date. But whatever system you choose, it only works if you maintain it. You could decide today to organize your fridge like a professional chef. But the moment you stop and start experimenting with other systems, it falls apart and the fridge devolves into a mess all over again. However, when eggs always go in one spot, meat in one section, and vegetables in that drawer, you know where to find what you need and exactly where to put it back.

This is advice we hear a lot, from skincare to fitness, but it applies just as well to simply keeping your fridge clutter-free. When something is complicated, it's hard to keep up. You might be dedicated the first few days, but if it requires too much energy or mental math, you're more likely to give up. So when you're choosing a method for organizing your fridge, choose something simple — something that requires very little effort to maintain.

To make things even easier, audit what's in your fridge. What do you almost always end up throwing out? Figuring that out helps you know what you actually need and what to cut back on when shopping. Beyond the money, that forgotten cabbage head or expired carton of milk is taking up space that could go to something you'll actually use. Ultimately, you save money, prevent food waste with this organizing tip, and open up more room in your fridge.

It's also more efficient when each item has a designated spot. You're not scrambling for where to chuck something because there's already a place for it. Once the groceries are home, arrange things so that perishables are the most visible. If it helps, use stickers or labels. Commercial kitchens already do this as standard practice. You can label containers with their expiry dates so you're reminded every time you open the fridge. And if you have kids, you can add an "eat me first" tag on items that need to go soon.