Monday, April 15

Spring Cleaning - Freezers and Baby Clothes (free printable!)

Time for spring cleaning! I can't say I've ever done legitimate "spring cleaning" before. I'm generally more of a clean-it-when-it-gets-dirty person and having my whole house deep cleaned at one time just doesn't happen. But I think the season has combined with my pre-baby nesting to create the perfect storm! I'm ready to tackle all the forgotten corners of this house! Since this is my first time jumping in, I decided to get a little guidance in the form of a free printable checklist (you can print a list here, and check out all their other free organization printables here. It's a gold mine. And I made my own printable freezer inventory sheet - we'll get to that in a minute.)

print your own spring cleaning schedule at Life Your Way



Days 1 &2 were kind of a freebie for me. My cleaning supplies are already gathered in a box in the top of the closet, and day 2's "quick declutter" didn't really happen since I've been constantly decluttering for a yard sale over the last couple weeks. That was a freebie. Then enter day 3 - clean out the fridge and freezer. This was a doozy of a task for me! The fridge was easy, I pulled out the food (and tossed anything old or expired) and wiped everything down with soap and water.


The freezers were another story. I did organize our fridge freezer last year (and it's still been working well) but I also have a deep freeze in the basement. And no idea what's in there. We're talking I-don't-think-I've-seen-the-bottom-since-we-moved-in. Besides possibly wasting food that gets lost in the bottom, I also tend to buy too much food because I didn't know we already had 3 bags of broccoli down there. Oops. So the freezer adventure started with dumping everything from both freezers onto the basement floor so I could see what I had to work with.

print my freezer inventory sheet here

I wanted to make a list of everything for my kitchen binder so I know at a glance just what we have. So I made a printable freezer inventory list to fill out as I went along. You can print your own here. (I also printed a freezer storage cheat sheet to help keep track of how long things last)


I organized the frozens as I went - making groups of meats, veggies, etc. This made it easy to organize my list. Plus when I put things back in the freezer I put them in their groups as much as I could (veggies in the basket, meats on the right side, misc pile in the middle. oops.)  so hopefully it will be easier to find what I'm looking for! Dumping things from both freezers helped me decide what to bring back upstairs too. Like I could bring up the older stuff to be eaten first, and I could bring up one package of chicken knowing I had 2 more still downstairs. The idea is that when I eat something from the upstairs freezer, I'll bring another up from the basement to replace it.

print your own here

I did end up tossing a some food that was really old or freezer burnt. Hopefully keeping better track of what we have will prevent that in the future. :) I also made a short list of things we need to eat ASAP. Things that are opened or have been in there longer. You can print that worksheet here.

print this worksheet here

And that's how we spent our morning on day 3. Even though it took a while, we still managed to sort through some more of B's old clothes while we were down there. So far my goal has been to keep half a tote of each size and put the rest in the yard sale. But I'd love to hear what you do with your little one's too-small clothes! My thinking is that half a tote would be enough to dress a future boy (and we could pick up a few things second hand to supplement if we need to) without taking up such a horrendous amount of storage space. I know we don't need all the clothes we have (B didn't even wear all of them!) but I don't want to get rid of everything and have to buy new since we will definitely be having more kids. Thoughts? Anyone? :)


So anyone else tackling some spring cleaning? Spill the beans - lets hear all your tips for organizing the freezer and storing kids' clothes!

3 comments:

  1. I like the idea of saving a half tote of clothes...We have been saving a whole tote and it's ridiculous. Just too much. We have always been blessed with so much more than we need, yet fear makes decisions for me sometimes. Working on this...

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    Replies
    1. I'm feeling the same way and he's only in 24m so far! It is hard to let go, I worry that I'll wish I had kept things later. It's hard!

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