Brilliant! Plus the soft sided bags allow greater use of freezer space for irregular shaped meats! Your spreadsheet is simple and elegant. I’ve been looking for a simple system to keep track of my food inventory and I think I’ve just found it! Thanks!
Thank you. I JUST got a couple insulated bags (got a new freezer this week). I was going to buy more if i liked them, but now I'm going to look for less expensive bags like this!!
Perfect! Great for a short person like myself. I thought I'd be making purchases of baskets and watching several videos. Neither are necessary now, I really appreciate this thank you!
on a comical note.... Teacher says: ok class today we are learning where different meats come from. can anyone tell me where beef comes from? Child (little johnny), little johnny excitedly shoots up his hand and says "The Justice League bag"
Reminds me of when my oldest son had to take the entrance test for kindergarten. When asked to name an animal that lived in the water, he answered "zebra." His inflatable pool toy was a zebra. LOL
I bought a chest freezer finally over the weekend and was looking for a way to organize. Your idea is brilliant! It's simple, cheap and easy to organize. Thanks!
Me again. Wanted to say that I have adopted your method and am so happy with the results! Easy peasy to lift anything that I want out ~ stackable, squishable, and handles for easy lifting to boot! Happy camper over here 😳. What I did do was to place my three turkeys in plastic bags each in their own for easy lifting out of the bottom of the freezer, and then placed whatever I had in each different bag and it works out perfectly. So even if you need to pull out the bags in order to get to the turkey it too, has its own handles and bag. It's very easy to set those bags on top of the turkey, finally now I know exactly what I have in that chest freezer! No more waste. Thanks for the idea 💡. Katherine
I'm so glad the bag system is working for you. I should put my spare turkey in a bag too. Right now it is at the bottom of the freezer and it is harder to pull out.
❤❤❤❤ this organization. I have been concentrating on that this week. I went down in the basement to get some frozen vegetables and I found one of my plastic shopping bags on the floor with two corned beef roasts each $12 apiece. You are really organized and I enjoyed your video
I can’t find the words to tell you how awesome I think this video is. Your system is brilliant and I really love all the tips and ideas!! Your personality is so sweet and savvy, you’re an awesome person and seem like such an intuitive grandma and cook. My husband and I are both active duty Army and have been for over 15 years now. We have two children, a little boy that is 6 and a little girl that is 5. While we knew what we were getting into when we joined the service, one thing I personally didn’t take into consideration was the fact that my children would live lives far away from any kind of grand parent figure. Your video is so helpful but it was also remarkably heartwarming. Your family (especially those grand babies!!) are very lucky to have you. ♥️
Thank you for the kind words. At least there is Skype now so your children can have face time with their grandparents. I feel extremely lucky to be able to be part of our grandkids lives.
You and I think alike. I bought some color bags and did that very same thing, red for meat, tan for grains/breads,etc. and green/yellow for green/yellow veggies. I do want to think you for the idea of using that large card for each bag. My thing was the use first on the individual packs in each bag but wasn't/isn't working out so good. This big card idea will work perfect for me! :) Thank you so much!
I love this idea. Right now we have our regular house fridge/freezer and in the garage we have a small stand up freezer. I do keep a list of what is in both. This is a great idea for those who have bigger freezers. I will share this with some friends. Thanks!
Your bag system looks good! I've been using cardboard boxes to store different meats but some boxes I have to pull out completely to get to the boxes underneath which is really awkward. I can fit way more bags side by side than cardboard boxes. Definitely will give this a try. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Prepper Potpourri Plus, I like the fact that they are squishable for the next bag to go on top. Where as the bins can't be adjusted. I absolutely love you for this idea! 😊
I use bins for the first layer at bottom of freezer and keep one type of meat in each bin. Then I also use the bags like you that sit on top of that layer since it is easy to lift them out. In those I have homemade sausage in one, homemade cured sausage in another, frozen veggies, butter/margarine, frozen treats in other, etc. Works like a charm because they can easily lifted out to acces the bottom. Otherwise it was too easy to just eat from the top. I also vacuseal my meats in foodsaver bags if I buy a lot at a good price as it extends the life of the item by 3 times. Having no air in the bag means no freezer burn too.
Sound like you have a great system. Yes the bags make it so easy to lift and get to the next layer. Like you, I love my Foodsaver for packing the meat and veggies.
I don't have a freezer, but the bags you used would be helpful in my side-by-side fridge/freezer as well -- in a smaller size of course. I love the cloth pop-up bags too; they would be great for my closet. Another great video, THANK YOU!
This is a great idea!! Thanks for sharing. Maybe you can mount a magnet or two on the wall so the metal freezer lid stays in place a little more easily. I use magnets for a lot of things and find them useful around the house.
Thank you thank you thank you. I think this will work. I've tried other ways and they just don't work. I'm gluing to use this for my holiday backing ingredients. 😍
I was on the verge of throwing our chest freezer out in the new year and replacing it with an upright with organisational drawers, because I can never find anything in the chest freezer. I advised my wife to buy an upright at the time and not a chest freezer, but would she listen?! Now she's disabled and unable to be in the kitchen, it falls on me to be the shopper and 'chef', including swearing at the chest freezer every time I open the lid. Your video has perhaps given our chest freezer a temporary reprieve from the recycle centre while I try your bags idea out. If it works for me then I will save a few hundred quid (GBP) on a replacement. Maybe I should say 'fingers crossed' at this stage. Thank you ;-)
@@lee9604 Yes, not too badly, thanks. Everything in my chest freezer is now in reusable plastic bags with proper handles from the local supermarket. Nothing like Superman or Batman printed on them, though, lol. I divided each bag up into specific contents, for instance chicken only, bread and rolls, pork, etc. It's a lot easier than trying to rummage through 'loose' items in the freezer but I still have to move some bags out to get to a bag with what I want in it if it is further down into the freezer, if you catch my drift. But it's no real hardship to do that. This bag system has turned my thoughts of getting an upright freezer with drawers from 'necessary' to 'maybe one day'. Hope this info helps.
Tried this bag system it didn’t work for me. You end up filling the freezer, covering the bags. I ended up using the coloured dot IKEA bin system, found on utube. I followed this man’s system & it worked. Keeping an inventory is the best way to rotate food. Over time my needs have changed & I purchased a tall upright freezer. So much easier!
Yay, I love any and all videos on organizing chest freezers. They are just miserable to organize! We have two mid-size chest freezers and my goal was to have the oldest one emptied and turned off at the end of last year. Didn't happen. I still have two plastic milk-crates of food to get out of it. :( Just love your ideas for the bags and the laminated signs. I have way too many different things frozen to be able to dedicate containers like that. We've got plastic milk crates...there is room for 6 of them plus at least 4 grocery totes and i just haven't made the good progress at using them to get it easier to separate. After a week-long power outage a couple of years ago I've made a big effort to reduce frozen food storage, increase canned food storage and I'm sooooo close to getting that other freezer turned off at last. I really enjoyed seeing the way you have your freezer organized. Thank you so much for taking the time to set up and film it.
Good system. Those types of bags are often handed out at fairs or given away by organizations, so conceivably you could get them for free. Of course, they wouldn't have cool action figures on the side. :)
I have developed an inventory system I really like. I put a 1 for each package of something I have with some space before the next 1. As something is removed from the freezer, a slash mark is made through the first 1 on the left of the list. As I buy more of something, I just add another 1 to the right hand side. This is then a perpetual list that only has to be redone when it is full…or when I do my next inventory. Ground beef 1 1 1 1 Ground pork X X 1 1 X used instead of 1 with a slash through it for illustration purposes
❤❤Thanks so much for the very useful information..Can you please share what size is your freezer..I’m doing lots of research before I buy a chest freezer,I already have and upright..I will be keeping the upright butI need extra space .
😎 👍 I love it !! I will try the Super hero inventory technique..my gkids will love it..LOL thanks again... *looking forward to viewing more Prep/home organization / task management videos* . cheers
I've always said we need smart freezer and I see they are starting to link phone with fridges. I wonder if syri would remember whats in your freezer? That would be handy. I like your low tech approach I forget stuff in the freezer all the time. I'm old school from poor background and it makes me sick to waste food , especially meat.
Excellent! Many thanks 😊 Just wondering, is this system still working for you, or have you tweaked it any? I had some plastic bins with holes from the dollar store disintegrate in my freezer, so looking forward to trying this!
I have supplemented the system with some large heavy duty used plastic vegetable bins I got from a greenhouse. I still use the bags in the bins though.
I wonder if you move your freezer a bit further away from the wall then maybe the door can open back a bit further and it will remain open? I did that to mine when I moved it and the door kept closing on me.
Okay, now this is funny..."Go get the ground beef from the Hulk bag." LOL Since I also have nerdy tendencies, I liked your organization and graph very much. Let's see two months down the road if the family cooperates. Good one, P.P.! (:
Wow i that would be a great idea I just saw a woman that does the recycling bin container I was thinking that's nice but someone was saying that she did that and her recycling bin cracked so I'm thinking I might do this one because I have a lot of bags from Wally world but I think I might use your method and do the comic book Heroes or see if I can get the Disney poo characters of my dollar store because that would be great because my friend is giving me her chest freezer and amazing I'll be so happy because she is getting a stand up freezer but I was already thinking of doing a list
i would buy some rare earth magnets (they aren't rare) from ebay or amazon and get gorrila grip glue and gluse some rare earth magnets to top of the freezer and then to a board on the wall attached to the studs. They are strong enough that it would hold the door open
Great ideas! Would the top stay open if it wasn't so close to the wall? I think they are supposed to be 6" away from anything on all sides. The top of mine stays open without being held up.
It's a good system, but if you're sending little Johnny to get something out of the Wonder Woman bag, how does he get the turkey out to keep the door open?
I have to go through mine at least every 4 months. I've got boxes in my freezer, but something always seem to get out of the box and falls to the bottom.
About a year but I have actually prepared bacon that was 4 years frozen and it was tasted fine. I DON'T ADVISE THIS HOWEVER! After a year, meat begins to lose it's nutritional qualities.
