What's in Your Freezer?

Have you ever lost anything in your freezer? Of course you have. We all have. Most freezers are bottomless black holes, particularly chest freezers. "Oops... forgot we had that roast... now it's totally freezer-burnt!" It always annoys me when we have to toss food away...

Fridge freezers aren't much better, be they the traditional top-mount ones or the pull-out drawer ones. Our fridge freezer is on the bottom of the fridge but consists of two doors, one for each side. There are three pull-out racks on each side which, you might think, would make it much easier to organize things but... such is not the case. It just means it's easier to lose something and then have to hunt through six different racks trying to find the elusive item.

Oh sure, it starts out as organized... we have a plan for what food will go into what rack but... over time, a rack will be too full, so we put something into a place where it does not belong and...very quickly... we lose track of what is in the freezer. Sigh.

And our chest freezer, which is tiny (5 cubic feet) can still lose things. Particularly if they cycle down to the bottom... you have to haul everything out in order to figure out what might be in the frosty pit. It's not the most efficient system in the world. And... ***cough***... sometimes we are too lazy to label bags or containers. "We'll remember that this is pea soup, right?" Nope... turns out apple sauce and pea soup can look remarkably similar through blurry, frosty plastic containers.

For a while, we had a laminated sheet of paper where we would try to keep track of what we had in the freezers and how much. That was when our fridge freezer was just the regular top-mount one. Two freezers... easy... nope. It worked for a while and then we'd get behind and... it all fell apart. Now, with a fridge freezer that has, essentially, 6 compartments, a two-sided piece of paper isn't going to work.

So I started snooping around for a freezer app. Surely someone must have come up with such an idea. Turns out that they have... many different options.

I took a look and downloaded an app called Items in my Freezer... it looked pretty simple.

I was able to add different freezer areas - so Chest Freezer - basket, Chest Freezer - shelf, Chest Freezer - bottom, etc. And then each pull-out rack in our fridge freezer got it's own section as well. I then did a freezer inventory coupled with some reorganizing and entered it all into the app. Voila! Instant freezer inventory. And it is relatively easy to update it as we consume things or add things. The only hiccup is that it doesn't allow us to sort by categories. So if my partner asks if we have any more baked beans, I have to scan the various freezer lists to see where baked beans show up (some are upstairs for easy use and some are in the chest freezer). It's annoying. But it's also free... and yet... annoying.

So I have been snooping around some more looking for an app that would allow us to categorize things and sort better. It would also be nice if the app were shareable so my partner could have it as well.

And I came across an called Frizor (it's by French developers - hence some of the quaint spelling mistakes).

It has ads or you can buy a subscription which costs €1/month (about $1.50/month) or €7/month (about $11/year). It has categories (veggies, meat, fish, starters, desserts, individual dishes, etc) and you can sort by all sorts of things, freezing date, categories, alphabetical or expiration date. I just downloaded it and am going to have to go and do another freezer inventory but... I think it has potential and it might be worth the cost. We'll try it for a while with the annoying ads and then see how it goes. It might be worth the annual cost (breaks down to $1/month) just in limiting the amount of stuff that gets wasted. Although... since we've gone meatless, there is much less of that!

I'm going to give it a try for a few weeks and will report back on how it goes...

How do you keep track of your freezer stuff?  Heck, do you even keep track of your freezer stuff?