How to Organize a Small Refrigerator the Easy Way

I have a love hate relationship with my refrigerator. I love that it keeps food from spoiling.

 

I hate everything else.

 

There are ridges inside the drawers and on the bottom shelf and easy for bottles to flop over and spill. The upper storage drawer makes only one side of the bottom shelf usable for tall things like milk cartons. Anything that doesn’t fit on the door migrates to the back of the refrigerator – forgotten.

 

We’re in the middle of a bathroom renovation which means we can’t kick the refrigerator to the curb just yet (which will probably happen when we eventually redo our kitchen.) Instead, I shopped the house, made a quick tip to the dollar store and gave myself a refrigerator organization renovation for  under ten dollars!

 

 

Save these hacks to your Pinterest boards for later! Share them with your friends!

DIY Refrigerator Storage and Organization Ideas

It helps to do this project when your refrigerator is empty-ish or just before you go grocery shopping. Keep reading to see what the finished refrigerator organization makeover looks like after a trip to the grocery store!

There are a couple of refrigerator storage ideas I kept because they are still are working for the way we eat and shop for groceries.

• I’ve always stored leftovers, open packages of cheese, and such in a container with a lid. It keeps the food fresh longer, you can easily stack them in the refrigerator to make more room, and it saves a surprising amount of cash and trash hitting your bin. I have glass, BPA free plastic, and repurposed food storage containers and all do the job nicely. The key is my husband’s genius idea of insisting on using clear containers so we can easily see that we need to eat something before it becomes a science experiment.
  

Tip: The more durable Pyrex replacement food storage container lids like these will fit on glass Anchor Hocking food storage containers if you need to replace a flimsy cracked plastic Anchor Hocking lid.  (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)  

• I like storing condiments, salad dressing, my husband’s 8 million bottles of hot sauce, etc. in repurposed 6 pack bottle holders to keep the bottles from shifting  and leaping to their death from the door shelves. Using bottle holders also allows us to store almost empty bottles upside down in the fridge so we finish every last bit in the bottle. If you are looking for something you can clean rather than replace, you can try these reusable refrigerator door organizer bins.
  

You can buy plain Kraft cardboard bottle carriers here if you haven’t found a surprise stash of I thought you put it in the recycling, I thought you needed it for a project

 

Easy DIY Refrigerator Storage and Organizer Hacks

 I took everything out of the refrigerator and gave it a good clean and clean out after finding a few mystery jars of unknown age lurking in No Man’s Land – the back of the shelves. This gave me the opportunity to mull over what I wanted to change about my unorganized refrigerator and how I wanted to fix it. The major issues were:

• Make it easier to clean the ridged bottom of the crisper drawers without needing to wrestle the drawer in and out of the fridge.
• Keep the water bottles from falling over and rolling around like drunken sailors  (*sings* earl-lie in the morning!)
• Store tall bottles of sauce, drinks, and cartons on both sides of the bottom shelf.
• Remove the black hole where celery goes to wilt underneath the upper crisper drawer.

  

Shedding onions was the inspiration for this project. True to form, they immediately flaked when I put them in the crisper drawer to take this picture.

 

I lined the crisper drawers and door shelves with dollar store plastic place mats I cut to size to make the surfaces flat and easier to wipe clean. The little pop of color doesn’t hurt either. I used a little museum putty (you can learn about my sticky yet removable museum putty friend here) to keep the shelf liners from sliding when I open and shut the refrigerator door. I didn’t tack down the place mat drawer liners so I can easily lift them in and out of the drawer to clean them. No more wrestling!

I tested upcycling plastic takeout containers to corral water bottles and No Man’s Land items. It didn’t work very well. The sides of the containers weren’t tall enough to keep my sports bottles from jumping ship from the slick and smooth storage tray. Instead, I found these exact drawer organizers with grip bottoms to keep the tall bottles from flopping all over the place.

 

This solution is worth its weight in gold!

 

 Since they work so well keeping tall stuff in place, I used two more grip bottom organizers on the upper shelves to store jams, bento flakes and such from being forgotten in the No Man’s Land of the back shelves. It feels like a brand new day every time I slide a storage tray forward and everything in it stays inside. No more drunken sailors! 

This exact thermometer in my refrigerator and freezer lets me know if I need to raise or lower the temperature to keep food from spoiling or getting freezer burn. 

The thing that made the most difference and solved a ton of storage problems was moving the upper crisper drawer to rest on the bottom shelf. The new drawer configuration makes me feel like I (almost) have a brand new refrigerator. I can see and store everything on both sides of the bottom refrigerator shelves!

 

To keep  the cheese drawer tidy,  I used two 9.75 x 3.75 inch drawer organizers similar to this one to store like with like. 

 

I also used one to organize the few disposable batteries we use and store on the freezer door shelf. No more lost button batteries now!

 

Tip: Unused batteries will last longer if you store them in the freezer just make sure to let them defrost before using them! 

Just as I finishing up with taking photos for this post, my Aldi Instacart arrived. Here's what the new refrigerator storage makeover looks like when it is full of groceries!

I'm embarrassed to tell you how long I've had this refrigerator and didn't think to move the cheese drawer until now. Oops!

 

Looking for more unique refrigerator storage and organization ideas? Check out the following options – and more! – below!

Did you like this post? Get more like it by subscribing to the Lazy Budget Chef RSS feed