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Krista Franks Brock is a Dallas resident and freelance writer who enjoys writing about a wide variety of topics from cooking and home design to the mortgage industry. When she’s not writing, she’s often either experimenting in the kitchen or pursuing artistic endeavors such as painting, sewing and jewelry-making. |
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We’re all guilty of it – wasting perfectly good food, leaving it in the refrigerator, forgotten in the back corner or the bottom of the produce drawer until it’s un-consumable. An average American family throws away 20 pounds of food every month and more than $2,000 worth of food per year, according to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Two major factors contributing to food waste are inefficient refrigerators and poor refrigerator organization. The first problem we can address by opting for an energy-efficient, well-designed refrigerator; the latter by following a few tips on best practices for food storage.
Despite what one might think, a full refrigerator runs more efficiently and keeps food fresher. “A full fridge is a happy fridge,” according to Samsung’s website. Keeping the refrigerator full reduces the amount of temperature fluctuation and lets the refrigerator run with less effort. Buying in bulk is a good way to keep the refrigerator full, and it has the added benefit of reducing grocery costs.
Here are a few of our top refrigerator organization tips:
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1. Keep smaller items in the front of the refrigerator where you can see them and remember to consume them before they expire.
2. Keep popular items in the door – always in the same place – to reduce the time your family spends with the refrigerator door open.
3. Store uncooked meat and fish on the bottom shelf to prevent cross-contamination.
4. Place the condiments you use most often in the door, and place rarely-used condiments in the back of the refrigerator.
5. Keep items that are most temperature-sensitive in the middle of the refrigerator, where the temperature is most constant, and less sensitive items in the door.
6. Keep produce in its original packaging, unwashed in crisper drawers. (The water from washing can expedite mold or rotting.)
While organization plays a part in keeping food fresh and preventing waste, the refrigerator itself is also partly responsible. Ideal temperature and humidity levels play an important role in keeping food fresh.
The Energy Star-rated, efficiently-designed Samsung RF4287HARS fulfills these principles while offering flexible, spacious storage. The 36-inch refrigerator offers 32 cubic feet of storage space – one of the largest capacities in its class.
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Flip-up and slide-out shelves allow the refrigerator to be custom-tailored to individual needs. Crisper drawers provide ideal humidity levels for produce, helping maintain freshness and flavor. The freezer also features convenient partitioning and a pizza pocket – making pizzas or other frozen meals easy to access.
The Samsung 4-door refrigerator also features Samsung’s trademarked Twin Cooling Plus System that maintains separate airflow in the refrigerator and freezer. Not only does the separation help keep temperatures in each section constant, but it also allows for two distinct humidity levels, which is ideal because for optimal food longevity, the freezer air should be somewhat dryer than the refrigerator air.
The Samsung refrigerator also features a FlexZone drawer between the refrigerator and the freezer. The FlexZone drawer has its own temperature settings for drinks, deli snacks, meats, or wine.
With the right refrigerator and a few organization principles, we can break out of the food waste statistics and save energy and money.
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