The Freezer Challenge: Part One

I've enjoyed following along with The Frugal Girl as she cleans out her freezer and challenges herself to use up a certain amount of things each week. This post is definitely inspired by her!

We have three freezers--two fridge freezers and one large upright freezer. It's nice but sometimes food gets thrown wherever is easiest at the moment and it's hard to know exactly what we have and where it is.

Such is the case with our fridge freezer in our kitchen. I had thrown and piled stuff in there to the point that food would fall out whenever we tried to get anything out.

Last Friday, I planned an easy dinner of bratwurst and roasted okra and zucchini and yellow squash. At the last minute, I remembered a partial bag of hot dog buns in the freezer so pulled those out to eat with the brats (we typically eat them bunless but we had some buns left from having company back in May.) That inspired me to tackle this little freezer compartment the next day!

I pulled everything out after taking before pictures, of course. :-)

Everything was set out on our island and I sorted as to what was deemed "challenge worthy" and what needed to be moved to our big freezer. All the packages of meat went to the big freezer as that's where they belong and I kept the frozen vegetables in the kitchen. Some of the other odds and ends were kept out to use quickly.

Here's what I had to work with:

• Small container cooked spaghetti squash--put right in fridge for side for Monday's dinner.
• Small serving of soup--put in fridge for Monday's lunch.
• Lone popsicle--I ate it right away!
• Partial bag of mini bagels--these were thawed and served with Saturday night's Breakfast for Dinner and finished up for Sunday breakfast. Bonus points for this since I also had an opened package of cream cheese to use!
• Container of cooked turkey--I'll be honest here. I had used some of this previously in a soup and it was still dry and stringy so I threw it out. :-( 
• One hamburger bun. Seriously?!? (Again, left from company!) I thawed it and made it into cheese toast to go with random leftovers on Sunday night. That wasn't hard!
• Gallon bag of chicken bones and vegetable ends and peelings for broth. Immediately poured all this in the crockpot and made crockpot chicken broth overnight. I then used the broth to make a big pot of gravy to use for one meal this week and freeze the rest.

What went back in the freezer to use later:

• Ice cream--we don't need a plan for this. It doesn't stick around long here.;-)
• Various bread and individual sweet rolls left from the market. (I've been selling my homemade baked goods at a local Farmer's Market this summer and always have a few things left at the end.) Some of the bread will be used for lunches this week and the sweet rolls are pulled out for breakfast occasionally. 
• Package of "Sandwich Skinny's" (left from company)--maybe use these for quick broiled pizzas or tuna melts in the next week or two. 
• Fresh ginger--This stays fresh in the freezer and I peel and grate it as needed. 
• Ice packs--these needed to be in there for easy access and there hasn't been room. 
• A bag of homemade doggy ice cream portions aka Frosty Paws. These are for Willie as an occasional treat so they'll stay in there. 

I didn't tackle the door yet but that is mostly spices and homemade spice blends that get used naturally over time. 

After photo:

It's much easier to get things from the freezer now!

I'll do another update on my freezers in a week or so.