Freezer Organization

July 21, 2025

I’ve learned that when someone offers to split a bushel of freshly roasted New Mexico Green Chiles, you say YES! Our local grocery store just started roasting them for the season, and when my friend offered to bring me some, I was very grateful. My partner Charlie has lived in the southwest for many years, and has a love for green chiles, and I’ve definitely developed a taste for them as well. We already had several containers of red and green “Bueno” in the freezer. Getting the addition of more green chiles inspired me to reorganize the freezers. In this post, you’ll get a glimpse into my freezers at home.

When I lived alone, it was a lot easier to know what was in the freezer, and to stay on top of the organization. But since Charlie is such a good cook, we’ve been generation a lot of leftovers. Take that, combined with getting a third dog, experimenting with homecooked food for the dogs, having TWO fridges/freezers, going on lots more road trips in a HOT part of the country, and living 2.5 hours away from Costco (!), I’ve had to develop a new system for our household. It really hadn’t been a huge priority since we had plenty of space, but with the new addition of a half a bushel of green chiles, I wanted to make sure I was giving them the proper space they deserved.

To store the green chiles in the freezer, I put them in sandwich sized bags, and then put those in a larger plastic Ziplock back. I know some people peel them before they freeze them, and others store with the peel on and peel before they eat them. We are storing them with the peels on.

It really didn’t take long to create a new system. Here’s what I did:

-First, I surveyed all that was in the freezer, and noticed there was a frozen water bottle in just about every nook and cranny of the freezers. Haha! Thanks Charlie! He works long days in the desert, and I am so grateful he remembers to stay hydrated and try to stay cool. I made a list of all the main categories of stuff we had.

-Second, I sorted. I started to take things out and move similar items together so it was easier to see how much we had of everything. In many cases, I think it makes a lot of sense to store backstock in an alternate fridge. We had been doing that with our fridge in the garage, but honestly I found it more difficult to keep track of what we had. Now we are just keeping the backstock of ice packs/frozen water bottles out in the freezer in the garage, along with our healthy stash of green chiles and a bag of frozen spinach. (Not only are we lucky to have two fridges/freezers, but having ones with drawers makes it SO NICE to find what you’re looking for.). Pro tip for this part: wear gloves and use a box or bin to save your hands from freezing off!

-Third, I purged a few old things that I know we will never eat. There really weren’t many… some old hamburger buns I don’t think we will want to go back to and some scraps of meat we had been saving to give to the dogs.

-Fourth, I decided where everything was going to go. I had mostly already done this in the sorting step, but there were a few tweaks I wanted to make.

-Fifth, I made labels. I often label our leftovers with blue tape and a Sharpie, which works out well, but I wasn’t confident that was going to work best for a longer-term solution. What I decided to do was to print labels and use a laminator to make them more durable. Because we have these nice drawers and clear shelves on the doors, I just put the laminated labels inside, so I don’t have to rely on adhesive. For the fridge in the garage, I used some blue tape to stick the laminated label to the inside wall.

Here are some pics to show you what I did. I even included a photo of the man from the grocery store who roasted the chiles for us!