If you are like other homeowners, you want your fridge to last for a long time, function as efficiently as possible, not to mention look organized, right? Well, there are plenty of things you can do. These things include:

Clean the fridge religiously

You must keep your fridge clean for it to operate at its best. The effort required to keep the unit in top shape decreases with frequency of use, so you need to use it regularly.

Your fridge may need to work harder to keep things cool if you only clean it out once or twice a year. Besides having a dirty and disorganized fridge, it is a waste of space and energy to have a shelf full of expired products you will never use.

If you give your refrigerator a simple cleaning once a month, you’ll notice that it looks and works much better.

According to refrigerator repair professionals, you should routinely clean your refrigerator with a food-safe solution. Use a store-bought product or create your own homemade remedy to clean surfaces and effectively provide a pleasant scent.

Sort your fridge with baskets.

One great approach to organizing your refrigerator is to use little baskets to manage different products on shelves, indoors, and even in the freezer.

Organizing your fridge’s contents with baskets will help, and the basket’s base will also serve as a barrier to catch spills and food debris. If milk leaks, you simply need to clean the basket rather than the entire shelf.

Keep a basket filled with wholesome snacks to help you stick to a balanced diet.

Label everything

Putting labels on drawers, doors, shelves, and baskets is a great way to create fridge heaven. This is because you can quickly tell where everything is.

For a great experience, organize your refrigerator according to meal type, product category, or “use by” date. You can do this in your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator.

Remember to use labels that will stick to the food items or baskets even when they freeze. The last thing you want is the labels to keep coming out.

Have a list of the contents on the door.

Using the space on your outer fridge door to keep an inventory of what you have and need is an intelligent way to determine what you need to restock.

Some popular ideas are to paint the door with blackboard paint, magnetic shopping lists, or whiteboard markers. After all, there’s no better way to know what you need than what you have.

As wise as it is to have a list, remember that you shouldn’t make your fridge look too dirty and disorganized by putting too many details on the door.

Line the shelves and drawers

Regardless of how organized and clean you are, your fridge will unavoidably get messy every now and then. As long as you use your fridge, you will occasionally leave behind crumbs from a poorly wrapped pastry, drops of jam, and drips from opening drinks. These aren’t pleasant to have, are they?

Sometimes, cleaning the refrigerator shelves is just too much work after a long night of preparing supper and doing the dishes.

The best (and simplest) solution to this issue is to use a heavy-duty, water-resistant liner that is easy to clean and remove for thorough cleaning to line the shelves and drawers.

Rather than using typical plastic shelf liners, use old sheet pans and baking trays that have peeled or warped. The elevated sides greatly improve spill containment and are far simpler to take out (almost like a drawer).

They also help when you are cooking big dishes and want to combine specific things to get everything you need at once instead of searching around.

Put related products together

Although it may seem obvious, you’d be amazed how many people mindlessly throw items into their refrigerators. This is wrong as it makes it hard to find what you want.

A good way to do this is to note items that complement one another and combine them. For example, combine deli meats and cheeses, eggs and milk, and peanut butter and jelly.

If you are confused about what to group, consider your regular dining routine and identify the combinations you most frequently choose. When you do it right, you will spend less time rummaging through your fridge to find something. You will also easily tell what is about to go out and replace it early enough.

Put items in their right spots

By placing things in their best possible location, you can significantly extend the shelf life of your refrigerator’s contents. For instance, you shouldn’t keep the milk in the refrigerator door due to excessive temperature fluctuations. Instead, put it on a middle shelf.

Storing the milk here ensures that it doesn’t spoil and makes it easy to access. You can also tell when you are about to run out and replace it.

Have a lazy Susan

A revolving shelf in your refrigerator is a great idea. It makes it easy to quickly view and access the condiments and canned and jarred goods you have on hand to garnish your gourmet sandwich.

When installing the lazy Susan, ensure that it’s professionally installed. This way, you can be sure that it can hold your items and the items you don’t have to put in the fridge. The unit also frees up space in the fridge, which means that you have more space to store the things that matter.

Parting shot

These are some things you should do to keep your fridge functioning optimally. By doing these things, you will not only keep your unit in top shape, so you won’t need to hire appliance repair Northern VA professionals to fix it if it breaks down, but you will also have an easy time finding the different items in your unit.

The post Valuable Refrigerator Tips Every Homeowner Should Know first appeared on HVAC Repair, appliance repair. The post appeared first on Express Appliance Repair

Cooking takes much less time if you know what you have and where everything is stored. By being organized, you have an aesthetically pleasing fridge and ensure that everything is safely stored and there is no risk of contamination.

Are you wondering what goes where in a fridge organization? Here is how to ensure that everything is in place, as given by appliance repair professionals:

Upper shelves

The refrigerator experiences temperature variations, much like your oven, especially when heat rises. Because they are the warmest, the upper shelves are ideal for:

Eggs: Even though some refrigerators are made with egg sections on the door, eggs do best on the second shelf, which has a steady, cold temperature.

Milk: Keep milk away from the refrigerator door. Since the refrigerator’s warmest spot is where milk is stored, you should keep milk at a lower temperature. For convenience’s sake, place plant-based milks like almond and oat milk next to the cow’s milk, which you should always put at the top.

Juice:  You should place freshly squeezed juices that haven’t been pasteurized close to milk. This makes sense even in non-pasteurized cases. You can use the refrigerator door for soda, bottled water, and all other juices.

Fresh herbs: You should frequently arrange the herbs you use in a little jar with water, treating them like flowers. They can be uncovered for a week or covered for two to three weeks with a plastic bag or moist paper towels.

Cultured dairy products are excellent for adding more flavor and protein to dishes. These products include labneh, Greek yogurt, plain yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta, and sour cream. Since they quickly prepare and contain milk or yogurt, you should frequently keep chia pudding and overnight oats on this refrigerator shelf.

Baking Soda: You should keep a box of baking soda in the refrigerator since it helps to neutralize food odors. It works great for baking and fits in the fridge just about anywhere.

Lower shelves

The lower you go in the fridge organization, the colder it gets. Whether or not your refrigerator has dedicated drawers for produce and meat will determine how you arrange this shelf.

Ready-to-eat snacks: If your young children can help themselves with snacks, place those in front of the refrigerator at eye level, perhaps on the second shelf from the top, so they can see and reach them without assistance. Add single-serve juices, smoothie yogurts, and washed and snack-ready fruits and vegetables like broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and sweet peppers.

Already cooked foods such as farro or baked oatmeal, or leftovers from meals you’ve prepared. For easy access at dinnertime, you can put any frozen or marinating meals (like yogurt-marinated chicken) in this space.

Bread: You should keep your bread chilled or store it on the lower shelf.

You should also store your raw fruits and veggies as low as possible if you don’t have produce drawers. Keep vegetables apart from fruits, as many release ethylene, which causes vegetables to wilt too soon. Make your produce drawers with receptacles if necessary.

Doors

The items on the refrigerator door receive a burst of heat each time the door is opened. As a result, doors make great storage for shelf-stable products you want to chill, including juice or water, and products that naturally preserve well due to their high sugar or vinegar content and lengthy shelf life.

These products include applesauce, jams, and jellies. (both store-bought and occasionally handmade)

Condiments: Mayonnaise, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, oyster sauce, maple syrup, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, spicy sauce, ketchup, yellow mustard, Dijon mustard, and salad dressings.

Pickled Products: Pickles add flavor to any meal, so you should keep pickled onions, turnips, sliced dill pickles, cornichons, capers, banana peppers, and olives (Kalamata, black, and green, like Castelvetrano and Cerignola) in your fridge.

Za’atar: A spice of salt, sesame seeds, dried oregano, and sumac. Although you can make it at home, you can buy it and store it in large mason jars in your refrigerator to extend its shelf life.

Drawers

Unless you are a vegetarian and can use the drawers for meat storage. The three most common drawers found on most refrigerators are as follows:

Meat and Poultry Drawer: Don’t squander this space on Coke cans. Some refrigerators even pipe colder air into the meat drawers to achieve the lowest, safest temperatures possible.

This decreases the chance of contamination if the packing leaks and keeps them cool. You should wrap your meat, poultry, and seafood individually to prevent contamination of the surrounding produce.

Since most people store these products in the freezer, you should only have 1-2 thawed weekly.

Produce Drawers/Crispers: Keep fruit and vegetables apart to avoid the ethylene from the fruits causing the vegetables to wither. There are models where the humidity can be adjusted.

Vegetables prefer higher humidity. Additionally, fruits prefer lesser humidity. When crispers are three-quarters full, they function optimally.

You should use the shallow drawer more for fruits, tomatoes, and peppers and the deeper drawer for larger root vegetables and cruciferous veggies.

Cheese & Butter: This might be unusual for some people, but there is no harm in having a whole refrigerator drawer devoted to cheese. If you love your cheese, store them all in one drawer to prevent them from becoming misplaced on deep shelves.

Parting shot

This is a detailed guide on what should go where when you are organizing your fridge. To have an easy time, put perishables on labels. Find the last day that food will be safe to consume when you open a package of deli meat or bring home a carton of eggs. This date may not coincide with the “sell by” date. Mark that date in the marker on the box.

Give the shelves labels. Your perishables are separated into their appropriate cold zones. Refrigerator repair Alexandria professionals recommend that you name the shelves and containers to assist you and the rest of the household in easy identification and knowing where to place each item.

The post What goes where in a fridge Organization? first appeared on HVAC Repair, appliance repair. The post appeared first on Express Appliance Repair