My first “carnival” entry! 
Call me frugal, efficient, or lazy – I’ll acknowledge them all. Any way you look at it, you may wonder why I have empty Ziplocs in my freezer. It’s all about doing fewer dishes and being prepared for healthy eating, my friend.
Some of my shortcuts when preparing a meal using real food involve doing some prep at other times. If I’m cutting onions, I ask myself: “Do I have time today to cut extra?” If I do, I throw some in a freezer bag (double-bagged for odor protection!) that is always in the door of my freezer. I mean always. If I’m out, I still leave the empty bag in there. It’s frozen, so I can then reuse it without problem, plus if I find it empty I know I’m out of cut onions, so I don’t keep looking “just in case”. It’s not like I could wash away the scent of raw onion and reuse that bag anyway!
In my fridge, sometimes you’ll find an empty plastic container in my meat and cheese drawer. It’s just waiting to be filled with sliced cheese. When I’m slicing cheese, I slice enough to fill the box. This way, my 3-year-old son can say, “Can I have cheese and crackers for a snack?” and I can say, “Sure, help yourself.” I don’t have to wash the cheese slicer or box every day, and we often are as ready to make sandwiches as the folks who shell out extra cash for pre-sliced cheese. I store the box empty because I hate dishes, and if I put it out on the counter to wait for more, it might get stinky.
I am also working on shredding my own cheese instead of paying Kraft or Meijer to do it for me. They add weird stuff to keep it from caking. I hear it’s made of trees. I probably don’t want to know! But I do hate washing the cheese grater. So I shred a box full at a time…and I leave the box in the fridge if it’s empty!
Other items that fill the empty containers:
- baby carrots for packed lunches
- soup-bound leftover cooked veggies
- salad lettuce that I haven’t washed, spun and chopped yet
- homemade applesauce
- dried out bread to be made into bread crumbs
- on my counter: if I have something dry like biscuits, I often reuse the container after just knocking out the crumbs in the garbage.
- …and my lunchbag often has a used sandwich baggie in it. If it’s something dry like crackers, I figure I can reuse the bag and save the Earth a little while I’m at it!
So if you visit my kitchen and open my refrigerator, your first thought will be: “Whoa. That’s a full fridge.” And then you’ll start to wonder why there are empty Ziplocs in there.
Click here for 10 Easy Prep Foods You’ll Always Find in my Freezer.
Hope you can benefit from my oh-so-lazy kitchen timesaver! It works for me! I can’t help doing a two-fer on this one – look for other basic tips at Works for Me Wednesday, and find other ideas for “Your Best Time-Saving Kitchen or Nutrition Tips” at the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival.
Visit Kitchen Stewardship on Monday for a Meatless Meals Carnival!
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Cute title! Thanks for joining in, Katie!
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I do the same thing with bags in the freezer. I’ll start with tupperware for things like sliced cheese. Easy!
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Oh thank goodness, glad to know I’m not the only one with frozen empty baggies in my freezer haha!
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I need to let my 17 year old read your post . . .
He thinks I am crazy for leaving empty ziplocs in the freezer and for wash and reusing others.
Buy a great big block of cheese at one time. The cheese I buy comes in a circle shape. I cut the outer areas off so that I have a large square.
The outer areas are shredded. I cut the middle square in half and use my cheese slicer to make thin slices for sandwiches or snacks that are then stored in containers in the frig. I do two big wheels of cheese every 2-3 weeks. Plus at the same time I grate the fresh mozzarella I buy.
It is alot of grating at one time, but it is nice to have real cheese pre-grated in the freezer. Plus I only clean the cheese grater once.
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Those are great ideas! I’m going to try the Ziplocs in the freezer for sure
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Just so you know, cereal bags (the ones you get from the store, when you are doing eating the cereal) are GREAT for that second bag around the onions for keeping the odor out of the freezer! I also use the ziploc bag that my fish comes in. The bag does not smell fishy, and it works GREAT to keep the onion smell at bay!
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Very smart! I do reuse Ziplocs, but I never thought about the freezer as permanent storage for them.
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I have recently started using my food processor for grating cheese – and it ROCKS! It has a grater attachment, and it is SO much nicer to grate a whole pound (or more!) of cheese at once than hand-grating. And SO fast!
I love your ideas; some I already do, some I’ll have to add in.
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That makes sense! I haven’t yet been grating my own long enough to figure out all the tricks. Of course freezing it is a good idea….
Thanks for visiting!
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Thanks, Meredith! Your site has some excellent info, too! Glad you stumbled across mine…
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Seuss girl, My mom just offered to let me borrow hers to see if I would use it enough to add it to my “wish list”. No more skinned knuckles! I’ve also seen attachments for a KitchenAid mixer that might grate cheese, so I’ll have to look into that. Glad my ideas helped!
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