Tupperware Fridge Smarts

Just prepare yourself to be amazed. Today I'm going to share with you an amazing find that saves money and space, and keeps this organizational guru one happy gal. 

WHAT IS IT? Tupperware FridgeSmart as a smart system of storing produce, based on how much ventilation it needs. You can open one vent, two vents, or no vents on the tupperware, according to what you're storing in it (there's a handy chart printed right on the side so you always know how to store various foods). And you can store various fruits & veggies together, as long as they're in the same ventilation family. 

Why Should You Be Amazed?

Reason #1- FridgeSmart keeps your produce FRESHER... longer! Way longer! Here's the difference between strawberries stored in and out of FridgeSmarts for three weeks... 

Reason #2- FridgeSmart frees up your produce drawers. We used to have two shelves full of all sorts of little containers of all sorts of little things we don't use all that often, but keep on hand. All that stuff fit in ONE drawer. I filled the other drawer with "grab & go" snacks- like yogurts, string cheese, etc. (plus drugs for our high maintenance doggie) 

Reason #3- FridgeSmart stacks all nice and modular, so it makes organization-lovers like myself quite happy.

Now, you put those three fabulous features together, and what do you get?

A total transformation! 

Just look at my refrigerator BEFORE and AFTER Fridgesmart......... 

Buh-bye clutter, Hello SPACE! That is the exact same amount of food! I didn't mess with the bottom-most drawer (which you can't really see well in my pictures anyway) or the doors at all. Every bit of food you see in the before picture is in the after picture. All the stuff we don't use a lot (all those little containers that took up TWO upper shelves) fit into ONE vegetable drawer. And the rest fit into the other drawer. Our produce is now all in the upper portion of the fridge, in the FridgeSmart containers. A couple are stacked double deep just to show how consolidated they can be. With all this newly-found space though, I'd really spread them out a little.

Something I really like about having the produce "upstairs" and the jars and containers "downstairs", instead of the reverse (the normal way- produce in the produce drawers)... is that the junk we should eat less of as well as the random things we keep on hand but don't need often are out of the way, whereas the produce is the first thing you see when you open the fridge. This is good for me because any food we've bought that needs to be eaten soon gets the prime space (not crammed in somewhere and forgotten). And stuff that sits in the fridge all year is shoved away in a drawer.

Now... I hate to break your hearts here, but FridgeSmarts Tupperware containers aren't cheap. But neither is wasted food. And FridgeSmarts are worth every penny for all the space I gained in my fridge by reorganizing it. (Ok, my Mom bought them for me for Christmas so they were worth all of HER pennies. But I loved them so much that I bought some more. So they're worth BOTH our pennies!) (I got a sweet deal on mine on Amazon, though my exact set is no longer available, I'd still give it a check.) 

Want to know one more helpful tip? You can go ahead and prep all your lettuce at once, then store it in a FridgeSmart container so it's ready to use bits at a time for salads. This is a better option than store-bought bags of prepped lettuce b/c those have usually been sprayed with extra chemicals to make them last longer. It's also great if you use a salad spinner b/c you do all your spinning at once, and have a prepped salad you can munch on for the next week.