As the most used appliance in your home, your refrigerator is opened frequently throughout the day. Food and drinks are constantly being moved in and out of your fridge. Spills, crumbs and sticky drips all create a messy refrigerator situation.
Cleaning your refrigerator does not require a lot of time. Once you have deep cleaned your fridge and added organized storage, it can take as little as 5 to 15 mintues a week to keep your fridge nice and tidy.
1. Remove everything
Toss any expired or questionable items as you are working your way through your fridge. Once you’ve removed everything, you can easily clean shelves and drawers without working around things. Centsable Mamma understands that a large fridge may take you a while to unload. But it is essential you can see all parts of your fridge before you begin cleaning.
2. Use a convenient cleaning solution
You don’t need to rush out and buy a specialty cleaner for your refrigerator. You already have everything you need in your kitchen to thoroughly deep clean your fridge. Clean Mama recommends using the simple combination of water, baking soda and dish soap. For her cleaning method and more tips see this tutorial.
3. Keep those shelves lined
Refrigerator shelf liners create a barrier between your food and your shelves. They allow for the quick and easy cleanup of spills and drips. This inexpensive tutorial uses dollar store place mats to create customized and unique decorative shelf liners. You can choose any pattern to match your kitchen.
4. Organize like items together
Organizing like items together makes you easily find things in your refrigerator. Cheese in the cheese drawer, veggies in the crisper, dairy on its own shelf — categorizing items together makes for quick and easy organiztion. Two Twenty One showcases how she organizes her space here.
5. Label things
Ensure everyone knows where to put things with these crafty labels. Perfect for clear organizing drawers, these labels allow you to quickly see where the cheese goes.
6. Create extra shelving
Turn file folder holders on their sides to create new shelves for smaller items. Bottles of water, yogurts and cheese can all fit in these creative shelves. Buzzfeed suggests also using them to store your tall vegetables, such as celery and carrots.
7. Use baskets to hold things
Baskets are a great way to contain items that roll around in your refrigerator drawers and on shelves. Apples, oranges and soda cans can all be organized using a simple plastic basket. IHeart Organizing uses a small basket to keep apples from rolling around the produce drawer.
8. Clean your icemaker
This is the dirtiest part but the most overlooked part of your refridgerator. The Shabby Creek Cottage was surprised at how much gunk accumulated in her ice maker. She suggests using a steam cleaner to thoroughly clean and disinfect your icemaker for a healthier kitchen.
Once your refridgerator is nicely organized, cleaning is an easy task. If you take a few minutes once a week to wipe out your fridge before putting in new groceries, your fridge will stay clean all the time. Share with your friends and family on Facebook!
