10 tips for small fridge management
before I got the hang of 9 cubic feet
In 18 months of living in a laneway suite, I have only one answer to the question “what was the hardest adjustment?” It’s living with a refrigerator 1/3 the size of my old one.
But I’ve got some tips for you!
10. Live with fewer condiments. So this might seem like a no-brainer. How many jars of flavouring for Asian-inspired cooking does one person actually need? And mustards? In what circumstance would it not be possible to substitute dijon for regular? And if you have mustard and you have horseradish, do you need horseradish-mustard (the answer to that is yes, obviously). But the thing is you don’t need to have them all at the same time! Enjoy one, use it up, buy another.
9. A place for everything and everything in its place This one is probably even trickier in a big fridge but the stakes are lower. In a big fridge, if you lose the mayonnaise. Bad example - who’s going to lose the mayo? But let’s say you do lose the mayo, then you can just buy another and discover that old one in six months when you do a clean-out. There’s not enough real estate to do this in a small fridge. I’ve developed a system and then an overzealous cleaning person came in and rearranged the whole thing when she did a wipe-down. Lovely. Not.
8. Store leftovers in stacking square or rectangular containers. Round containers waste space. Remember geometry class?
7. Reuse take-out containers and store leftovers in them on top of jars on the top shelf. They may look precarious, anchored on one side by the tamari sauce and on the other by the sesame stir-fry bottle, but you alone will open the fridge, cautiously, ready to catch anything in mid-fall.
6. Shop with a list and don’t deviate. Honestly, this is likely the hardest for me. During COVID, I retrieved my monthly online selections from the grocery store’s curb. I haven’t quite gotten over the excitement of cruising the aisles again, marvelling at new product, or reminiscing with myself about a special item I shared with Jack.
5. Select produce for its durability, store the delicate stuff properly, and use it first. We’re all well-acquainted with ability of lettuce to transform into green slime magically overnight. Or so it seems. If you wrap it in paper-towel rather than the plastic bag the grocery story insists you use, you can squeeze many more days out of it. Same with mushrooms. There’s a reason that the good stores provide paper bags for mushroom storage - they get mouldier faster against plastic. Use those prone to going bad sooner and have some hardier ones in the crisper for the end of the grocery-buying cycle. You know - the red cabbage and Brussels sprouts, carrots, turnip, and onions that last seemingly forever. You can whip up a nice slaw with all those things and still feel like you’re eating a salad, even the day before you do another shopping run. Oh, and I’ve also discovered the magic properties of iceberg lettuce - or “head lettuce” as we knew it on the farm. This stuff lasts WAAAAAY longer than all the others, and there’s the nostalgia too.
4. Don’t buy stuff you’re not going to consume. As a dairy farmer’s daughter, I’ve always thought I should have milk on hand. This worked well when Jack was alive because he drank it by the gallon. But now? Yeah, it’s dumb to buy milk. I buy a 1/2 litre of half-and-half to use in coffee sometimes but even it often gets dumped at its Best Before.
3. Drink red wine. White needs to be chilled. And it feels SO 2020 when I had a box of all-purpose cheap white in the fridge at all times (what do they mean that it last 6 weeks?) Red is better for you. It’s a win-win.
2. Freeze wisely. My freezer consists of three drawers at the bottom of the fridge. It’s packed to capacity but I know what’s in there. And I no longer freeze leftovers that I didn’t love the first time. You have to know yourself and the freezer is not a magic box that will improve your mediocre dinner. It’s more likely I’ll eat a questionable dinner if I leave it in the fridge for tomorrow than if I put it aside for a month from now. My freezer has a loaf of bread; bags of peas, corn, and edamame; half a bag of pierogi; one pizza; a bag of shrimp; three salmon pieces; five duck legs; four bags of leftover chilli; two small containers of coconut milk excess to my needs at the time; and a pound of butter cut into eight (I bring each into the fridge as I need it). And that’s about it.
1. Buy a second fridge :-) In August 2023, I opened Chandlerville to friends and family, serving snacks and drinks in the backyard. I knew a party for 50 - even a drop-in - would be tricky with the fridge situation, so I planned a two week vacancy in my old house, allowing me to do food prep and storage in its full-size kitchen with its full-size fridge. This year, I devised another work-around - I bought a mini-fridge and temporarily located it in the gazebo. It felt like an enormous cop-out but sometimes you gotta admit your limits.
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