How to organise your fridge so food does not expire: 70% full, zones and first in, first out

How cold should a fridge be? Standard fridge and freezer temperatures

No amount of organising helps if the temperature is wrong. The basic standard is below 7°C in the fridge and below -18°C in the freezer.

7°C is not an arbitrary number. Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration defines 7°C to 60°C as the temperature danger zone: food that stays in this range lets bacteria multiply quickly. The whole point of refrigeration is to keep food below that line.

Bear in mind that chilling and freezing only slow down bacterial growth; they do not kill bacteria. Food that has already started to spoil does not become fresh again in the fridge — it just spoils more slowly. That is why “it’ll be fine once it’s in the fridge” is a risky habit.

Why should a fridge only be about 70% full?

Keeping the fridge about 70% full is not about looking neat. It is physics.

Cold air has to circulate between the food. Where the fridge is packed tight, the air cannot get through, the real temperature in that spot rises above what you set, and food spoils in a place you think is safe. Setting the fridge to 4°C does not mean the box wedged at the very back is at 4°C.

A packed fridge has a second cost, and it is often the bigger one: you cannot see what is at the back. What you cannot see, you do not use, and what you do not use expires. Most food thrown out of a fridge ends up there this way — not because it went off too fast, but because nobody remembered it.

Raw and cooked food: three rules for fridge zones

An arrangement you can actually keep up comes down to three rules:

1. Cooked food above, raw food below. If juices from raw meat or seafood drip onto cooked or ready-to-eat food on a lower shelf, that is cross-contamination. Raw food always goes on the bottom shelf. Keeping raw and cooked food apart is one of the five food-poisoning prevention principles from Taiwan’s health authorities.
2. Everyday items at the front, spares at the back. But “at the back” must not mean forgotten — that is what first in, first out, below, is for.
3. Give opened food its own zone. Once something is opened its clock runs faster, so keep opened items together somewhere visible and use them first. How long something keeps after opening is usually printed elsewhere on the pack and is not the same as the expiry date — see expiry date, shelf life and best before explained.

The door is where the temperature is least stable, warming up every time you open it. Milk and eggs need a steady low temperature and should not go in the door; it is better left for condiments.

First in, first out: new at the back, old to the front

A basic rule in every restaurant kitchen works just as well at home: put new purchases at the back and move older ones forward.

Do this every time you restock and you will never end up with two open jars of the same sauce, the one at the back long expired.

Portioning helps too. Split a big pack of mince into small bags before freezing, so you only take out what you need instead of defrosting the whole lot and refreezing it — repeated thawing and freezing degrades quality quickly. In the freezer, use clear zip bags with a date label: frozen food barely changes in appearance, so you cannot tell how long it has been there just by looking.

Should cooked food cool before it goes in the fridge?

This is a common debate, and the answer is cool it quickly, rather than waiting at room temperature.

As a guide: at a room temperature of about 25 to 35°C, cooked food should not sit out for more than 2 hours; above 32°C, refrigerate it within 1 hour. A kitchen in summer easily goes above 32°C, so be quicker then.

Divide the food into small containers, spread it out, or stand it in cold water, then get it into the fridge as soon as possible. Putting a whole pot of hot soup straight in raises the temperature inside the fridge and affects the food around it, so the point is to portion it and speed up cooling — not to wait for it to cool naturally.

Worried about things expiring? Organising fixes what you cannot see, not what you forget

A well-organised fridge solves the problem of not being able to see things. But some things organising cannot help with: what is deep in the freezer, and what is in the first-aid box and the cupboards. Frozen food always looks fine, right up until you realise it has been in there for two years.

What you need then is not better storage but a list: what expires when, how much is left, and what to use up first. On paper it never gets updated, and keeping it in your head is even less likely to work.

Handing the dates to something that reminds you before they arrive is what finally takes this off your mind.