Sardine chicken and freezer organization porn

Sardine Chicken...
The incredible, sleeping, sardine chicken have been captured on camera.


Yes, they now use the coop to sleep in at night. But they all try to fit in one nesting box. It cracks me up to no end. They also seem very bewildered that they all can't always fit in. Wait till you get bigger girls.

On to the freezer organization porn (thanks Lucy for the phrase)...

Here is our freezer. 9 cubic feet. I didn't want it to become an unorganized bin of things... SO, I decided to make a grid for organization.

This is the before shot. Notice the bump in the bottom where the motor is, and there also has to be space left on top for the bins.


So, I took coroplast, which I got at a local plastics store in their leftover bin (for $5!!!). Coroplast, essentially, is plastic cardboard. I made a wine-box type pattern (where you cut the pieces with slits and then push them onto each other-- thanks Erin for the analogy).


Then, to make sure the pieces didn't constantly flex and push out, I used a hot glue gun to seal the corners. The glue does get brittle when it's cold, but it still takes a lot to break the glue seal. It's about as good as anything else.


And voila! Organizer in the freezer! I may end up cutting a few sections if I find I consistently need bigger space. Each "compartment" is 6"x4", and the depth goes the entire way down to the bottom of the freezer. I do like that it forces us me to put things in smaller packages. Really, that's what I should be doing generally. Rare is the circumstance when something takes up more than a quart bag (and if it does, you generally thaw it out, use half, and then refreeze, right?), so this system makes us me freeze things as I probably should be freezing anyway. The only hang-up is some of our beef is in larger parcels. I'll just have to keep an eye on that now.



There are more freezer photos below, but I thought I'd take you on a tour of the rest of our small-but-busy laundry room.

First, there are the 4 new chicks in their bin, with their lamp.

Judgmental chick is still judgmental.


There's also a bike.


And some of my seedlings (with bins above).


I am crazily excited right now with these seedlings. Because of the chicks' heat lamp, the room stays a bit warm. My peas? Went bonkers. They grew 1" yesterday. I LOVE that the chicks' heat lamp now has a dual purpose, making the energy expenditure more justifiable. These particular peas are Park Seed's Green Arrow Peas. YUM!


Here's the window where I'm going to soon build shelves for my seedlings. This will particularly be nice for my heat-loving plants, like tomatoes, edamame (fingers crossed that works!), squash, etc. They'll get a jump-start indoors and then go outdoors around May 10th.


Back to the freezer.
Here's the system with the two bins inside. No, the bins can't slide back and forth anymore. But I'm ok with that. They can hold a few bigger things


And here is the freezer with the entire contents (!!!) of the small freezer. Yes, that's only a little bit of the bins and four compartments used. WOW! The foil in one of the bins was me being lazy; it's sausage that I should have taken out of the containers and frozen in packs. I had to go to work so I threw it in foil and in the freezer. SO really, that should be in a compartment too, but temporarily, it's in a bin. And yes, that is a duck.


I love that with this system, I can know at all times how much space I have. Do we have enough room for x that is on sale at the store? We know instantly.

The only issues are two main things:

1) Rotisserie chicken. I like to buy those to have them on hand for crockpot dinners and then making chicken broth. They don't fit well in the grids. Maybe I can use the bins for them?

2) Pot pies. When I make them, I make 30+. I think I can use the space on TOP the red grid (there's about 3" between the lid and the red grid) for freezing the pies, and then I can stack them in our house freezer. I think.

Regardless of the two issues, the system cost me $5. So, if it works, great. And right now, it works.

Finally, I like that if we have something liquid-y and we put it in a compartment, the liquid will mold to the compartment. So we may have a bunch of square-shaped freezer bags. But that's great right? It's using the space to the max.

So here's hoping it works out.