My freezer!

Jane over at This Week for Dinner shared her exciting news yesterday: she bought a deep freeze! I congratulated her and mentioned how I used bins to keep mine organized. I thought you might like to see how I keep my freezers organized (or un-organized if you catch me during a busy month).

Here's a short story about my love affair with my freezer:
About five years ago, my husband agreed with me that our life would greatly improve with the addition of a new household appliance: a freezer! We brought the our new freezer home from Sears and gingerly placed it in the garage. It stored all my sale and coupon bought foods at first. Then it stored breast milk. When it was time for us to move to the east coast, my husband asked if we needed to bring the freezer. Seriously? Not only did we need to bring it, but it was on the list of "must have room for" when searching for a place to live in the much more expensive DC area. The beloved freezer had a special place in my amazing laundry room in the basement. Low and behold, we were forced to move again. The freezer stayed on the list, but this time, it's priority level increased - I needed a kitchen with space for the freezer! My poor husband.

My freezer and refrigerator have a loving relationships staring at each other all the time in my tiny kitchen! I can grab anything I want with just turing around. It's fantastic!

So that I can easily find whatever I want, I use blue painters' tape to label plastic bins. I probably would have chosen different bins had I bought them new for the task, but I re-purposed ones I already had in the house. There's fruit, veggies, and fish. On the door are homemade freezer jams. The bottom shelf holds nuts. The bags next to the fish are organic blueberries I washed and froze during peak season that I put on my cereal every morning and my fresh herbs that I freeze from my garden. The bag next to the veggie bin holds homemade muffins and bars.

To show my true colors, this is the refrigerator freezer. It was organized about a month ago....things got out-of-control, though. I haven't fixed the mess, yet! You'll notice the muffin tin. I'm freezing left-over coffee that I used for mocha chip muffins in portions for the next set of muffins I make.

Maybe I'll organize this freezer this weekend.....