Freezer Inventory Fun

I decided to defrost my freezer the other day, go through everything, and create a freezer inventory.  It was negative four degrees outside so it was the perfect opportunity to take everything out of the freezer and put it outside.  I knew there had to be something positive about this frigid weather. I have a huge deep freeze. The kind of deep freeze that things get lost in, never to be found again, short of like the Bermuda Triangle.  In the ten years that we have lived in this house, this is the first time I have defrosted our deep freeze.

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I knew it was inevitable that there would be stuff that we had to throw out.  I was hoping that the oldest thing would be three years old or less, which is still a pretty low standard.  Sadly, there was meat in there from 2014. It is a little embarrassing to say that, but I am sure there are other people out there like me.  Never again will I not know what is in my freezer. I do not want to waste food or money anymore. Yes, simply organizing your freezer will help, but I believe organizing and creating an inventory works better. You can see below that I used stack-able bins to organize almost everything. They worked very well.

Why I feel a freezer inventory works better than simply organizing your freezer

Every month when I am on my computer creating my meal plans and working on my grocery lists, it is simply more convenient to have my freezer inventory list at my fingertips in an Excel spreadsheet.  This way I don’t have to get up and check the freezer each time I go through a recipe to check to see if I have the ingredients I need. It saves me time. As a wife and working mother of three kids, my time is a hot commodity.

How I took the inventory

As I was taking things out of the freezer I wrote down each item, as well as the quantity. I used a “good-old” pen and paper.  It might have been easier, if I had help from another adult, so they could type the items into an excel spreadsheet. The only “help” I had was from my four year old and six year old and, unfortunately, they don’t offer a computer class on how to master Excel in preschool or first grade yet.

Next, I entered the list into two separate Excel spreadsheets.  One is an inventory of all of my freezer meals. This will be extremely helpful when I am planning out the next month of meals. The other is an inventory of all of the other food.  

How to keep track of it all

In order for this inventory to work, everyone in the house has to be on board.  Thankfully, my kids are young and still have to ask if they can have something to eat, so they won’t be taking food out of the freezer without my knowledge.  My husband has agreed to write down whatever he removes from the freezer. I thought maybe we should have a little white board next the freezer to write down what is taken out, but my husband felt the best spot would be on the bottom of our grocery list that is attached to the refrigerator.  This way, every week when I am ordering groceries from the grocery list, I can use the freezer inventory tracker to update my excel spreadsheet, and order more items accordingly. I created a very simple form with both the grocery list and freezer meal inventory tracker on it.

My conclusion on the freezer inventory process

Going through, and organizing, the freezer was not actually that difficult.  It probably took me about two hours. It has only been about a week, but so far, I think it is going to be an effective, efficient, and money saving process.  My husband’s comment at the end of all of this was, “Just because we now have more freezer space doesn’t mean you have to fill it up again.” Okay, so I tend to buy in bulk, just in case.  I think I get that from my dad. I will definitely be adding more freezer meals, but will keep my buying in bulk tendencies in check.