The start of a new year often brings resolutions to stress less, work out more and to eat healthier foods. However, even if you aren’t engaging in a major life overhaul, it is definitely a good time to clean out your fridge and dispose of all evidence of holiday excess. We just undertook this endeavor ourselves and have a few tips for you to make organizing it and maintaining it a little easier.

After cleaning out your fridge and washing out the bins and shelves, consider lining your produce drawers with reusable cloth liners and your refrigerator shelves with clear plastic wrap to make future cleanings easy. The cloth liners can be tossed into the washing machine between uses and the plastic wrap can ripped up and replaced once something has spilled.
Gather all like products together - such as produce, spreads or snacks - and put them in clear bins or baskets with labels. This makes finding and retrieving the items easier for you and the family as they can easily be pulled in and out. We even use a variation of the clear bin for the produce we use most often so that we can easily grab the tray and have everything we need in one place.
If space is at a premium or you don’t love everything in bins, try a Lazy Susan to maximize shelf space and keep everything within reach.
For smaller fridges, check out these magnets that will keep your metal capped bottles on the ceiling of the fridge freeing up space below for more food items.
Clearing out expired food would be easy if you could easily read the date. Our trick for staying on top of it at home is to write the date on the product in Sharpie so that it is easily seen. We also do this with items that have a shorter shelf life once opened such as chicken broth, tomato paste, etc.
Avoid spoiled dairy and meat products by storing them on the lower shelves of the fridge where it is coolest, not the door where temperatures can vary through daily use. Also, consider putting all raw meat products in a clear bin so that any drips are contained and don’t contaminate the whole shelf.

How do you organize your refrigerator?