Picked up a new chest freezer and, deer willing, I'm ready to start filling this sucker up. Seems like once upon a time I saw some pretty handy/helpful hints on organizing the chest freezer so that I don't end up with 10 year old meat on the bottom and a rotating supply of frozen pizzas on top.

Basically I now have a medium size chest (15cuft) in the basement and a small one up near the kitchen so I can rotate new stuff up to the 1st floor as I empty that one out.

Of course if I'm successful in killing 2 or 3 deer in the next month I'll be putting a ton of individually packaged sausage, burger, roasts, etc. in the freezer.

Thoughts?

Foodsaver is a must have.

When I kill a deer and process it I use the 8" Foodsaver rolls. After sealing the ground I flatten the package out, making a square or rectangle, pretty flat. I stack these in the freezer, saving all kinds of space. I try to do the same thing with steaks/backstraps, but obviously they don't lay as flat as ground. I use a Sharpie to note date and cut of meat.

So the routine is kill, then process. Then I dig thru the chest freezer with neoprene decoy gloves and put newest meat on the bottom, and fill back in any older meat towards the top.

[This message has been edited by WC87 (edited 12/3/2013 8:18a).]

I have an upright freezer so I can't help too much. One thing I have found to be very helpful is to make FoodSavered bags as flat as possible for freezing. They take up A LOT less space and stack much more nicely than odd shaped packages.

Also, the seal flap is a great place to label them. That way you don't have to unstack everything to see what it is/read the label.

I have an upright now, but had a chest freezer back in school.

You really have to make a conscious effort with a chest freezer (upright too, though I found that it is easier to do with an upright) to keep the older meat on top - I started out well, but ended up in the position most everybody else ends up in and got lazy more often than not though.

Every time you process and package up some meat, you need to take out what you have and put the new stuff on the bottom. If not, you end up with 5 year old meat on the bottom that you never touch and a rotating layer for the top 1/3 that is easy to get to.

I thought about trying to make some removable trays at one point that stacked on top of one another to make things easier, but thinking about it is as close as I got. You might find some wire baskets or bins at a place like Harbor Freight or Northern Tool that you can make work.

I did manage to keep it organized by type of meat though - chicken, beef, sausage, etc. all were segregated.

The tips above about using a Food Saver and then flattening out the packages are great tips - and not only does it save space and make stacking easier with things like ground meat, but a flatter package that is pretty uniform in thickness also defrosts much easier and faster without that lump of still frozen meat in the center that you have to constantly expose.

I'm about to start using these in my deep-freeze as soon as I finish processing the deer I killed last week, and then try re-organize the entire thing. These are just small collapsible, stackable metal shelves. The GF gets off on organizing things, and she has these things in just about every cabinet in the house. They're pretty handy to have actually, you can really store a lot more stuff.



[This message has been edited by BurrOak (edited 12/3/2013 8:37a).]

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I have those in a couple of cabinets - for things like plates and flatware, theya re great as you can double the amount of things you can put in a cabinet.

I don't think that I have room in the deep freeze for them though.

Those shelves are that BurrOak suggested work good. I picked up a couple of the more vertical, non collapsible ones which I believe are meant to be school locker shelves. They can actually hold a lot of weight

Hot pockets and corn dogs in the the little baskets, under the baskets it's ground meat on one side, steaks on the other.

I always thought milk crates would be an effective way to organize a chest type freezer. They obviously take up some space, but they'd make it really easy to group things, they stack easily, etc.

I use milk crates for all things on the bottom and maybe a second level. Red crates are ground, blue is chili meat and yellow crates are steaks. Works for us.

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I like that idea. that's sort of the line I was thinking about.

I do have a food saver and use it a lot.

Keep 'em coming!

I use milk crates with my chest freezer. Deer in one color, hog in another. With my upright, if it fits, stick it in.

I can get more in my 14 cf freezer than I can in my 20 cf upright.

I got a small dry erase board, maybe 12x18, and put it on the wall next to the freezer. I write on it a short description, date, and number of packages in tick marks. As you pull something out, wipe off a tick mark. I'm not going to say this is kept up by everyone in my house, but it gives you a fairly accurate idea of what's in the chest. Once a year, usually in the winter, I pull things out and re-sort the stuff and update the board. I also have three wire baskets that definitely help the sorting and inventory process. My wire baskets came with the chest freezer.

I just take my deep freeze to the lease with me when I process. This insures I have to empty the previous year's meat and never run into the real old meat stuck below the fresh.

This wouldn't help if you were buying meat from other places or something to store in there.

(We have cold storage and a log book at the lease so processing there is legal.)

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I'm about to start using these in my deep-freeze as soon as I finish processing the deer I killed last week, and then try re-organize the entire thing. These are just small collapsible, stackable metal shelves. The GF gets off on organizing things, and she has these things in just about every cabinet in the house. They're pretty handy to have actually, you can really store a lot more stuff.


No deep freezer here, but the fiancée loves those too. Makes keeping food in the refrigerator/freezer easier.

[This message has been edited by BurrOak (edited 12/3/2013 8:37a).]

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