How To Clean A Freezer (Home Planner Project Week 1!) 🏡

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This week we're reviewing how to deep clean a freezer as our home project of the week!

How To Clean A Freezer

(My Home Planner Project This Week!)

This week's project from the 2020 Home Planner  was to deep clean our freezers, and even though I didn't think mine was all that bad, goodness I'm thankful I looked a little closer!

Um . . . bleck. It neeeded it way worse than I realized! 

Cleaning Inside Your Freezer

If you're just learning how to clean your freezer – you may get overwhelmed with complicated methods.  Mine is simple – a bucket of sudsy water and a rag!

Here's how I clean out the freezer at our house:

1. Unplug your refrigerator.
2. Remove everything from the freezer.
3. Throw away any expired or freezer burned food items (or things we won't really eat)
4. Mix a gallon of hot water with 1/4 cup Mrs. Meyer's Multisurface Concentrate (You can also use a warm water and white vinegar mix in a spray bottle if you don’t have a store-bought cleaning solution.)
5. Use a few rags (I especially like these microfiber cloths for cleaning) and wipe down any residue from the freezer
6. Dry the freezer with a dry rag or paper towels
7. Refill freezer and organize by product

I separate the frozen food by category, including fruit and veggies, meat, ice cream, cheese and prepared foods. For the record, I do that… and then my hubby and kids throw it all back in any-old-which-way, which is why I have to clean it out  . . . again . .. twice a year. )

But that's just the reality of letting them live in my house! 😉

Need a more thorough clean-out than that? 

If you have an extra gunky freezer situation, you'll need to use some elbow grease (Let's say one of the kids left a soda in the freezer…which exploded…. and now sticky gunk is stuck to literally EVERYTHING!  Ask me how I know this….)

First, remove any shelves, racks and drawers from the freezer and set them to soak in the sink  with dish soap while you wipe down the rest of the freezer.  

Next, wash them in the sink with a dish sponge or scrubber, and dry them thoroughly before returning to the freezer.

TIP: You may want to let them warm up to room temperature rather than go straight from freezing to hot – to avoid them cracking.

My Reward?

You'll never believe what I found while I was in there. . . .

D. I. N. N. E. R.

(I know, I know . . .  so exciting, right??) 

Not only did I find one dinner, I found a whole bunch of freezer meals that were just waiting for me to make them.

(A whopping 8 meals to to be exact.)

I always stockpile basic freezer items when they're on sale, and when I make a big batch of something I pop the extras in the freezer. (However, I have a tendency to forget I've put them there.)

Here's are the meals and snacks I came up with today after just 30 minutes of work:

• banana bread
• grilled salmon
• broiled chicken (we use this marinade all the time and love it)
• breakfast for dinner
• brown sugar slow cooker pork tenderloin
• chicken wings
• slow cooker ranch chicken tacos
• caesar steak wraps
• 2 freezer meals that I tested for our upcoming freezer meal series (I can't even wait ~ you are going to love love love these!)

WOOHOOOOO!

(Think we have an ice cream addiction at our house? Ahem.) 🙂 

Not only do I have a shiny freezer now, I also have oodles of meals since I know what I have to work with.

Success. 

If you're feeling overwhelmed and like this is one you'd really rather skip this week, I'm telling you what, it's worth taking a few minutes to tackle yours too.

I get my Mrs. Meyers cleaning supplies delivered monthly from Grove Collaborative – they're a fabulous company and right now new customers get a Welcome Gift of a Grey Cleaning Caddy, Mrs. Meyers Multipurpose Spray, a Mrs. Meyers Dish Soap, a Mrs. Meyers Hand Soap, and two walnut scrubbing sponges. ($30 value) WOW!

All you have to do issign up here and make a $20 purchase of anything else on the site – and this freebie will be added to your cart automatically.  Plus it ships FREE!