packing fridge pantry freezer

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How to Pack up Your Kitchen: Pantry, Fridge, and Freezer

Posted in: I'm Moving, How To Pack, Moving Checklists & Planning

Moving day is fast approaching and you’ve already utilized all the best tips for packing up. But you’ve left a few dreaded tasks for the last minute: how do you pack up your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer? 

Chances are, your kitchen is well-stocked with everything from perishables, to frozen food, to shelf-stable pantry items—plus that one bag of musty beans that’s been following you for years now. The good news for your pantry, fridge and freezer is there are plenty of solutions for relocating your kitchen without wasting food, so read on for the down and dirty on packing up your home’s hardest working room.

1. Widdle down your groceries by crafting a 1-2 week creative meal plan that uses every perishable in your fridge

scramble

This sounds dumb, but it has to be said: stop buying groceries.

Got that far? Good. Now, start at your fridge, where it’s time to get galaxy-brained about how to use up any dairy, proteins, and fresh produce. As the first items to go bad, they’re not generally worth moving unless you’re traveling an extremely short distance. You might want to recycle the takeout menus cluttering your drawers to give yourself an added incentive, and layout a menu plan for the days leading up to your move.

Some menu ideas: 

  • For breakfast, a scramble or a hash is a great way to use up veggies, eggs, and bacon
  • At lunch, try a piled-high fridge-dump salad, or open-faced melt hot from the broiler
  • Come dinnertime, turn to stir-fries, casseroles, or even a hearty stew or pasta sauce that can be made in bulk and then frozen and reheated (check out the cooler tip below) as one of the first meals in your new home

If your household is small and you’re struggling to clear through everything, try baking for the neighborhood or hosting a dinner for friends (or your COVID pod, as is often the case these days). Feel free to label it a “housecooling party”, if you adore themes as much as I do. You can even send guests home with a goodie bag of snacks or condiments that you don’t want to trash but can’t bring with you.

PS: There’s a specific food donation service for people who are moving

move for hungerAnd of course, your local food bank will usually be grateful for any canned or otherwise shelf-stable goods you have to share. You can organize a drop-off yourself, or ask your movers to donate your extra food to Move for Hunger—a national nonprofit that mobilizes movers across North American to collect extra food while on jobs, and then deliver it to community outreach centers like pantries and food banks.

Donating to them is a very popular method for people who are moving. Last year, they coordinated the delivery of more than 5 million pounds of food throughout the US and Canada—all items that would likely have been discarded otherwise.

2. Expired or soon-to-expire items have got to go (moving them is expensive)

The more weight you’re bringing from your kitchen shelves, the more expensive your move is going to be, either due to weight, time, or both.

Keep an eye out not only for long-past expiration dates, but also containers with just a dollop of something suspicious left inside. Remember, that date on the label is technically how long the unopened product is good for, so why tempt fate?

Here are some specific tossable items to scour your fridge, freezer, and pantry for:

  • Opened bags of snacks
  • Opened packages of frozen foods
  • Unsealed condiments
  • Defrosted meats
  • Home-frozen meals from a year ago (gentle reminder to label everything you freeze)
  • Anything with freezer burn
  • Opened beverages
  • Lurking leftovers
  • Musty- or dusty-smelling herbs, spices, or baking ingredients

It can be time-consuming, but it’s truly worthwhile to get eyes on everything. A friend of mine recently realized she’d moved a single container of canola oil ten-years-expired to three apartments in a row, and boy did she feel silly (not to mention grossed out).

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3. Start your kitchen tear-down by boxing dry and specialty goods, and a week early

Can you spot the one item that SHOULDN’T be in this box? (Wrap your liquids!)

Now that you’ve pared everything down, it’s time to get packing.

I’ve found that the best way to start this process is to bring some empty boxes into your kitchen no less than a week before the big day. As you move through your farewell meal plan, you’ll get a good feel for the items you use on a daily basis versus those you get into more rarely. 

As soon as you identify a “shelf-stable specialty item”, go ahead and place it in a box. What are those? They aren’t simply canned items, they’re stuff like:

  • Liquor
  • Your spice collection
  • Fancy infused olive oils
  • Stashes of coffee beans
  • etc.

Don’t worry about wrapping anything liquid or fragile from this pile until you have everything in one place. You first gotta see what you can do without, as well as to make sure any heavy items are well distributed in a box, so no one box gets too heavy.

wrap fragile items
It doesn’t have to be bubble wrap, just make sure one fragile food item doesn’t ruin your entire box.

But once a box is getting close to full, encase fragile items in a layer of protective plastic wrap, then fill in any gaps with unopened bags of rice and beans to keep items in place during the move. For extra security, double-bag those makeshift rice-dividers in plastic grocery bags or freezer bags, and seal them with duct tape to prevent leaking or breakage. (You can also use crumpled-up butcher paper instead of rice or bean bags.)

A note on how to pack spices

Spices are both expensive and messy. You need to make sure the lids are tightly screwed, and that each spice is individually wrapped. (It’ll be worth it!) If their container is less than satisfactory, try to tape them shut so that nothing escapes into the box. A piece of scotch tape over the holes of any shaker you have wouldn’t hurt.

Once your boxes are ready, seal them up and label clearly and specifically with the items inside, how to handle them, and where they’re headed. For example: “PANTRY—dry goods” or “BAR CART—fragile”.

4. Make one essential food box for what you’ll want right away at your new place

essential food box

If you’ve been playing your cards right with that meal plan from earlier, your fridge and pantry shelves are nearly empty now with only your everyday items remaining. These hardworking darlings deserve a box all to themselves so they can be the last into the truck and the first out of it. (And so you don’t have to unpack every single box to enjoy your first meal in the new place.)

Depending on you and your diet, that could be any of the following:

  • Coffee (!!)
  • Dry pasta and a jar of sauce
  • Cans of tuna, bread, and an unopened jar of mayonnaise
  • Cups of soup that can be heated up easily in the microwave
  • Salt and pepper, which you’ll never regret having on hand 

Ideally, you’ll want these foods to come in plastic or otherwise unbreakable containers, but if you have to work with glass, just make sure you wrap them carefully.

5. For your freezer, consider a cooler, but only if you’re moving long distance

cooler
If you’re down to just a few frozen items, consider a smaller bag like this.

If you aren’t moving too far away, you can also pack up a cooler or two of any fridge or freezer essentials that survived the culling in step two, but didn’t get eaten this week. That includes frozen items like,

  • Steak
  • Chicken
  • Fish

These are generally cold things too expensive to go tossing out on a whim. (I don’t know about you, but I’m no millionaire; these shrimps are coming with me.)

Without a cooler, once again, double – or even triple- bag these items before packing with ice (or dry ice if you have it), because they’re going to give off some moisture as they warm. Make sure to note in big block letters that these boxes are holding perishable essentials for the fridge or freezer! There’s no point toting these items along if they’re just going to rot in a box on your fancy new tile.

6. Celebrate with a grocery trip in your new neighborhood!

Finally, a purely fun item on this list! Visiting grocery stores is one of my favorite ways to get to know a new area, so make sure to bake that first grocery trip into your moving budget to replace any expired items you had to get rid of.

With the combination of the old reliable items you brought from your old kitchen and some exciting ingredients sourced from your new spot, you’ll be feeling right at home again in no time.

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