No shortage of fridge magnets
I don’t know if this is a problem for you, but it is for us! Having made a meal that has leftovers, the leftovers go in the fridge, things get busy and other items get pushed in front, the leftovers go to the back and you find them a couple of weeks later. In a fairly nauseating condition. We hate food waste and so I had this idea to keep our leftovers front and centre.
The basic idea was to install a small (removeable) whiteboard on the front of the fridge, which we could use to record any leftovers that went into the fridge and the date they went in – keeping things front and centre! I am aware that it would be possible to use a whiteboard marker directly on the front of the fridge generally, but our fridge is dark grey/black, and even if it wasn’t I didn’t want to wind up murdered in my sleep!
One of the other issues that we have is that I will cook up bits and pieces, usually legumes like red kidney beans or chickpeas, pack them off and put them in the freezer rather than using canned equivalents. They don’t exactly get forgotten, but I can forget how many I have and when I put them in. Plus some leftovers wind up in the freezer as well (like our home-made veggie burgers). The freezer is a chest style and things can also get lost in it, and obviously the storage time is months not days, but I need to keep track of that stuff too.
I checked through my gear and didn’t really have a whiteboard the right size, so I picked up a small (290mm x 290mm) cheap one for less than $10 that I thought would do the job. The whiteboard came with a pen and some small squares of double sided tape to attach it to wherever, but I didn’t want to attach it to the fridge permanently. To get around this I gathered up four of those advertising fridge magnets (for local plumber and electricians etc.) that turn up in our mailbox with disconcerting frequency. I used some double sided tape to attach four of them to the back of the whiteboard as an experiment. It worked remarkably well!
Fridge magnets and double sided tape - An amazing combination!
I placed the whiteboard on the front of the fridge and left it there for several weeks to see how well it would stick, and stick it did, although it was still easily removable if I wanted to remove it.
The format was pretty simple. With a permanent marker I drew a line down the centre and in my distinctive (and crappy) handwriting wrote ‘Fridge’ on the left and side and ‘Freezer’ on the right. I the use the whiteboard marker to make entries on the white board and erase them when the item is used. So far it is working pretty well although I reserve the right to change the formatting in the future if it makes sense to do so.
Finished product
Having seen how well this works, I have decided to locate a similar whiteboard using the same process directly on the freezer and use it to record the commercial products placed in the freezer. Each entry will have the number of the items in the freezer written down against the name and as one is withdrawn, the number will be corrected on the whiteboard list. As mentioned above, sometimes things can get lost while you are ratting around looking for other things so if it is on the list – I keep digging! Also, a list of what is inside the freezer, will make drawing up a list for shopping day much easier.
I initially set it up on the front of the freezer, but rubbed against it when getting stuff out, rubbing off some entries. It is now sitting on the top of the freezer, the magnets are holding it in place with no problem when the top is opened.
