When was the last time you checked what you have in your freezer?
With money getting tighter and tighter these days, did you know you may have your own little gold mine sitting in your kitchen without even realising it? I don’t know about you, but my weekly shopping bill is increasing and with the latest story about the current cost of Lurpak butter and so many other food items increasing in price, I’m very conscious about my expenditure in all areas of my life. Which brings me neatly back to the freezer!
Growing up, our freezer was always ridiculously full – getting something out was like a very cold game of Jenga and my mum seemed to have some sort of magical ability to fill those drawers with what seemed like an impossible amount of food – and it’s a habit I know I’ve inherited. Speaking to lots of my clients, having ‘no room’ in the freezer is also a very common issue for lots of us and also can be something that gets in the way of our healthy eating and weight loss goals.
Why is having space in your freezer important?
One of the key things that helps me stay on track is batch cooking. Filling my freezer with home cooked dishes in various tupperware containers is absolutely vital for long term success. If your freezer is already bursting at the seams, how will you find room to squeeze in 4 boxes of chilli and 2 tubs of soup for example?
My freezer also contains ’emergency’ food – things like bags of frozen fruit and vegetables, low fat sausages and other items I can make a quick meal from when time is tight or my plans go a bit wonky.
Doing a regular freezer stock take
I won’t lie, if you’ve not emptied and checked your freezer for a while, this is an activity that does take some time but once you’ve done it, keeping on top of it and doing a stock take every few months gets quicker and quicker!
I try to do it every 2 months but I’ve left it a bit longer than that this time and it was starting to really annoy me – I had no idea what I had in there and was just shoving stuff in each week so on Sunday, I put an hour aside to tackle it and get everything sorted before I did any meal planning or shopping this week and what a valuable hour of time that was! I was astounded at what I found in there and it means that now I know what’s in the house, my food shopping bill for the next few weeks will be drastically reduced.
I’m lucky enough to have 2 freezers in my kitchen – one is a 4 drawer and the other is 3 drawer – that’s 7 drawers which are always pretty much full – that’s a lot of food!
But whatever your freezer situation is, knowing exactly what’s in there is key to save you money and time too!
A few tips
Get an A4 piece of paper
List how many drawers of freezer space you have
Allocate a certain type of food to each drawer. My main categories are:
- fish
- meat
- batch cooked meals
- desserts / ice
- pops / ice lollies
- vegetables
- fruit
- miscellaneous (all sorts ends up in this drawer!)
- veggie products (like Quorn nuggets, Linda McCartney sausages
Take out one or two drawers at a time and then use your list to put the food into piles or sections.
I usually start with meat and fish (the top two drawers) – I empty them out, put the empty drawers back in the freezer and then stick in any meat or fish I come across and pile the other items from those two drawers into groups.
I then take out the next two drawers and empty them – putting any meat or fish straight into their relevant drawers and filling the newly emptied drawers with their relevant bits.
I continue this process until all the freezer drawers have been emptied and then sorted and are back in the freezer.
I then take out one drawer at a time to organise it neatly (ish) and at the same time write down exactly what’s in there so I have a full idea of exactly how much food I have and then can keep track and plan my meals accordingly.
What I quickly realised is that I have enough salmon fillets to last us for ages! There’s enough meat to feed us for several weeks too as well as some random batch cooked meals which I’ve not labelled up – they’ll be interesting dinners over the next couple of weeks!
If I added up the value of what’s in my freezer, I reckon it’s well over £150 and now actually means that apart from fresh fruit, veg and dairy products, I don’t actually need to do much food shopping for a while so our shopping bill will come down for a few weeks, I’ll free up more space and can then do a big batch cooking session to fill up the freezer over the summer when hopefully it’s going to be too hot to cook! (that may be wishful thinking though on my part lol!)
I’ll then stick this list on the fridge, refer to it each time I meal plan and cross stuff off as I use it.
Now, I’d love to say that I keep it this organised permanently, however that would be a lie! Give it a couple of months and the list will be completely out of date, food will be all over the place again and I’ll repeat the process but it doesn’t take long if you do it regularly and you’ll definitely save yourself some money.
Next on the list - tackle the food cupboards and do a stock take of those (I'm very likely to have a lot more chopped tomatoes and chickpeas than I realise!)
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I like the idea of this I have 2 freezers that I really do need to sort out !!! I made a start of my larder cupboard last week 😂 xxx
it’s a fab feeling (plus frees up so much space)