French Door Refrigerators: How to Best Organize
French door refrigerators are quickly becoming a favorite when it comes to refrigerator styles. These modern appliances combine the convenience of space and accessibility with the luxury of contemporary style and design.
If you’re working with a French door refrigerator and trying to figure out the best way to organize it, there are a few tips that we have to share with you. Of course, organizing a refrigerator can take on many different forms, but there are some pointers that everybody should know when dealing with a French door refrigerator.
What Is a French Door Refrigerator?
French door refrigerators have side-by-side doors on their top half, serving as the refrigerator portion of the appliance. These doors have multiple shelving areas, while the interior of the fridge also has drawers for storage. The lower half of a French door refrigerator is made up of a pull-out freezer that opens like a drawer.
Where to Start When Organizing Your French Door Refrigerator
First things first, you’ll want to completely purge your French door refrigerator before you begin the organization process. Of course, if you just purchased the fridge and haven’t yet used it, you don’t have to worry about emptying out food and beverages. However, you can still give your French door fridge a solid wipedown to remove any smells, chemicals, or germs leftover from manufacturing.
If you do have a French door fridge full of food, toss any food or beverages that you no longer want, and put the remaining items on the counter while you plan your reorganization method. You’ll also want to wipe down your refrigerator to clear it of any unwanted smells, food spillage, or germs.
How to Create Zones Within Your French Door Refrigerator
Next, you’ll want to think about how your food selections can be separated. For example, if you’ve got a half-dozen salad dressings, you’ll want those to be grouped together. If you have a large selection of marinades or sauces, you’ll probably want to keep those grouped together. The same goes for jarred food, beverages, produce, cheeses, meats, and so forth.
By organizing your foods by type, not only will you have a much cleaner, better-looking fridge, but you’ll also have a much easier time finding the item you’re looking for when you open your fridge. Along with making cooking a lot more convenient, this will also help you save energy and keep your refrigerator cold as you won’t have to keep the doors open for long periods of time.
How to Make Use of Your Crisper Drawers
Refrigerator drawers don’t only exist for organization — they’re key in helping keep certain items fresh for as long as possible. Most French door refrigerators will have a crisper drawer, which should be used for produce. However, when it comes to storing produce, you don’t want to randomly assign fruits and vegetables to drawers with no rhyme or reason.
Crisper drawers allow you to manage the humidity level within the drawers, making them ideal when it comes to giving produce a longer shelf life. The general rule of thumb is that you’ll want to store items that rot quickly in drawers with lower humidity. On the flip side, you’ll want to keep produce that will wilt in drawers with high humidity.
Your drawers may have a dial to adjust humidity, or they may have a window that can be opened or closed to adjust humidity. Additionally, you may have meat or cheese drawers as well.
Door Shelves Are Ideal for Beverages and Bottles
French door refrigerators have two sides of door shelves, doubling the amount of space most fridges have for bottles and beverages. Because of their height, cylinder-like shape, and variety, sauce bottles, dressings, beverages, cans, and liquids are most easily accessible from door shelves in a refrigerator.
Additionally, because you might have quite a few similarly shaped bottles that contain different things, by keeping them in the door shelves you can read all of their labels quite quickly without having to shuffle through layers of bottles, keeping cold air from escaping out of the fridge.
Don’t Forget About the Freezer
Lastly, you don’t want to forget about the freezer portion of your French door refrigerator. While the freezer is the smallest portion of the refrigerator, and while it probably holds the fewest items, you’ll still want to make sure it’s well-organized and easy to navigate.
Keep all similar food types near each other, and make use of internal separators to keep zones from melding into one another. For example, TV dinners can be kept stacked on one side of your freezer, while frozen meat can be kept within a separated portion of your freezer. From there, desserts will also be separated, as well as frozen vegetables, bread, and any other miscellaneous food items you have stored in your freezer. Remember, an organized fridge will help save you time, energy, and electricity.
Resources— Keys to Inspiration, The Bewitchin Kitchen, Country Living, Kitchn
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