Tips n Tricks for RV REFRIGERATOR STORAGE // how I keep a lot of food in my tiny campervan fridge

[Music] well hello I am out here on a beautiful sunny day and I'm gonna talk to you about my RV refrigerator I have a three cubic foot Domanick compressor refrigerator and I have a love-hate relationship with it I love that I have a fridge I hate that it's so tiny so today's video is over a year in the making and it's a culmination of lots and lots of trial and error in my attempt to maximize capacity in the fridge and also make it more user-friendly for me to get in and out there I'm gonna share with you all of the things that have worked out really well for me and hopefully some of them will help you guys out too all of this food that you see on the table I'm able to put in my tiny little refrigerator I'm gonna show you how I do that so the first couple of camping trips that I took I found myself sitting in the bathroom to look into my refrigerator and find things that became very awkward very quickly and so like many of you I started using baskets to just pull things in and out so I should note that what I have ultimately done is I've rearranged the order of my shelves that metal shop has a little clip that holds it in place I actually will move the clip the other thing that I removed was the drip pan I know that there's a need for Japan because there's a lot of moisture that happens and these little refrigerators but my frustration with every time I tried to remove the drip pan or clear it I had water spilling out everywhere I just ultimately decided to get rid of it there's another reason that I wanted to remove the drip pan and that was because I wanted to take my top shelf and change it and put it in the very top slot and that's weird because I'm going to show you this I tried filming this in my RV it's just too tight to get to the refrigerator so this would be the back of the refrigerator this is my top shelf and the freezer is probably about here so it's a super skinny little shelf which you may think is somewhat useless and it was and is just like that but what I ended up doing is if you look at the bottom of the freezer compartment there are some slots in the middle framing I decided to use those slots and so what I actually did was my test which I did film and I'm going to show you that was about a year ago I just used ribbon because I was camping when I had this brainstorm and that's what I had in the camp berth I've since read done it and I've used paracord which works much better but I'm just going to walk you through it in essence what I did is I took that paracord I threaded it through the holes in the freezer and connected it looped it back around the wire so elastic is important and you want to keep it relatively tight and this is why what I did is I turned this shelf into a sliding shelf and the elastic just makes it not fall out so essentially I can slide the shelf forward the elastic holds it I can tip it down and I can access whatever it is that I've put in there and then it tucks away very neatly so that's been amazing because it has now freed up the rest of the cavity of the refrigerator is much bigger and deeper for me to put things in what I do because I don't have a drip tray anymore is I use these sponges and I actually place them in here I'll put two two in at a time and that does two things one is it kind of holds everything I put in here in place it catches all the moisture and that way when you are doing this and you're tipping that thing down you don't have water running all over you so that was my solution to that it's worked out really well I am NOT a full timer so for me it became paramount to have a system where I could pack stuff up in the house and literally just carry it plug it into the refrigerator and call it a day the advantage of my system now is that when I want to find things I don't have to snarl around in the refrigerator I can literally just pull out a tray put it on the counter do what I need to do put it back in saves me a lot of angst in finding things that I can't find and it also helps keeping things cold because I don't have that refrigerator door open indefinitely while I'm trying to find the perfect piece of cheese so I bought a lot of containers and baskets and systems and I tried multiple configurations this is what works best for me in the end and I'm gonna share them with you to save you all a whole lot of headache so I don't remember the brands but I will put them in the comments below this system comes in multiple sizes this is the exact size that I chose you can see that it has a little bit of an angle here I put this on the very bottom of the refrigerator no shells and they fit side-by-side perfectly they literally slide in and this front edge fits behind the front slot on the floor of the fridge if you have a fridge if you have this fridge and you try it you will know what I'm talking about don't try to put these two side-by-side anywhere else on the refrigerator other than on the very bottom they will be too wide for any of the shelves they only work on the bottom FYI so having these is super handy because I can fill them up with whatever I want I'm not designated to certain sizes etc and then when I need to get one or the other out of the fridge I'm literally just pulling this whole thing out doing what I need to do and putting it back in so that has worked really well for me on my second shelf which I place about this high I use this this is a different brand but a similar kind of feel in-law these fit on any of the shelves up higher in a refrigerator the little spines on the side of the fridge cavity makes it a little bit narrower or higher up than it is done at the bottom and this has worked exceptionally well for me I literally have this on the bottom and this on the top and then I have my a wire rack system at the top so that's all I'm using I can fill this up with the bulk of my food and take it in and out as needed if I am I'm gonna do a profile if I am pulling stuff out of the refrigerator I'm just literally taking this out now I will say if you have the himer active like I do some of those refrigerator doors do not open all the way this might be a little bit too big to clear what's happening in the door mine opens all the way so I can pull this in and out very easily so two different brands two different sizes I will put all of that information down below and after dozens and dozens of different things this has worked out really well for me I've been using the system for about six months now if you don't want to spend that kind of money because these can be a little pricey and you're a Tupperware user the one thing that I will say is if you're going to use topper wear try to use square Tupperware that will maximize your capacity again I tested multiple Tucker's because I don't really use them at home and I'm using that term generically I guess that's a plastic containers so I found a brand I really like this is not I have no connection with this brand this is just through trial and error this particular system is the zip lock system and this is why I really like it and it really works is they are square in shape as opposed to round so I'm utilizing all of that capacity these particular ones have lids that have it's not exactly a locking mechanism but it helps things to not slide around they also have one finger lid placement which is really handy so you can take a couple of these put them on top of each other and they really don't move around so in the little refrigerator that I have you can put four of these on a shelf and if you have two shelves that means you have eight of these containers which is a lot of food so if you're a weekend camper and you like to prepare your meals ahead of time so that you're not really fussing with food because you're too busy doing other things this is a really nice system because you can put a meal in each one of these and then you just having one of these when you go so eight of these will fit in the refrigerator with your little skinny shelf on the throw it comes in multiple sizes they have small ones in little square ones so super handy and work really well if you don't have liquids in them you can actually fit five of these on the side on a shelf but they're not liquid tight so don't do that if you have liquids the other little point I wanted to mention is and this is why I like these they stack as you may have noticed really well into each other storage is a huge issue for us in RVs so anything that stacks is a bonus so these really don't take up very much space here's a little tip if you don't want to be having containers stored in your precious storage space in the RV if you have food in a container in your refrigerator stick it in the other container and store it that way and that way you have a spare and it's not taking up a whole lot of space so handy little tip for Tupperware storage is to just double up in your refrigerator and that way all your story and your cabinets are these skinny little tops so that's pretty handy the other Tupperware that I did find that I really really liked this is a rubbermaid product are these so they these come in different sizes and they have a little system where they have one of those freezy packs that kind of goes into them too I was interested in this size I like the size it's small I use a lot of things like capers and nuts and that kind of thing so this is a good size for me what I do like about these is they do actually lock into each other so this skinniness fits in the little shelves on the door so I can literally put these in the door if I choose for easy grab and go it's great for snacks for the kids too if you want to preload them and then you just grabbing a box washable etc I will say the really tiny version of this I found did not lock very well into each other so just an FYI this size and the size above it bigger than this locked really well the teeny tiny ones not so much very very handy this also will fit in that skinny little top shelf if you want to slide a bunch of these in there you can do that too so those are the plastic containers that I have chosen to use they work really well for me so the next little gizmo that I have to show you has to do with holding small things I take a lot of supplements and vitamins and things like that and I travel a lot and I got really tired of putting individual little things in pill boxes that was just far too fussy for me so I had to come up with a system where I could kind of grab and go and have everything with me and have enough quantity with me because I never knew from one day to the next where I was going to be or how long I was going to be there so this system I've been using for a lot of years and I just used it in the RV as well but this little system is called go stack they come in multiple sizes this is why I love them because you can disconnect reconnect and fill as many as you want the handle comes off once you have everything filled up you can literally use for my supplements right here so I have this long thing I'm literally grabbing one thing with me I also like to keep these temperature controlled so I keep them in the refrigerator and by doing this it allows me to I'd totally end up with two stacks like this and I keep them on that little top shelf that I told you about you sort of keep them anyway so super handy I use these for everything they are pricey I wait till them on sale I buy them up when they're on sale they last a very long time very handy supplements they are handy for screws I have one in the RV that's filled with fuses little nuts and golds little things that I might need in the RV very handy for that you could do a first aid kit they're big enough to put q-tips in so yes I use all the time every day I really really like them the one thing I don't like about them is they are not watertight so you can't store liquid in them I'm gonna get to my solution for that in a minute but I did want to point out a couple of things because these are pricey some people might be turned off by that so the other solution that I have used in the past is taking tiny little snack bags this particular brand I get at like the dollar store I really like them they're small supplements and you can write what they are and then you can take one of your container boxes and have all of your pills in that so that works really well now let's get to the liquid aspect I'm gonna clear all of this away so we have room to work tada alright so the liquid dilemma I searched long and hard for this I found two things that I liked one was a little chunky for me and then one ended up being perfect and I ended up finding these if you have babies in your world you probably know what these are if you don't this is going to be a hard moment for you so this is called I know baby they make several kinds so you have to be careful that you buy the right ones but these work very similarly to what I had before they end up locking into each other they are completely liquid tight and they have little pores which are great but what's even better is you can take the lid off so to put things in it's easy if you don't want to use it for liquids you can put nuts or whatever in here and then just lock into each other and function in the same way that the other little system that I use functions these also store in that handy little top shelf that I mentioned and created they also store in the side door in the refrigerator door compartment so I use these for condiments this is a super handy way to have multiple mustards your ketchup soup mayonnaise sister BBQ sources I mean all of these right here that would be half of my refrigerator if I was to put the actual bottles of containers in the door this way I can have dozens of condiments with me at any given time and it takes up a tiny bit of room I don't remember the exact ounce measurement at each one of these holes hopefully I'll find out and I'll post it somewhere for you all but these have turned out to be really really exciting for me to use because I can carry all of that stuff with me so you know baby one of the things I discovered with the door is you know you have these two little shelves on the door a bottom one and a top one there at a fixed height on my refrigerator I can't adjust the height and so in order to maximize capacity on the door my challenge was to find containers that maximized the space on the door so on the top shelf these little stacking system kind of takes care of that the other thing that I wanted was I wanted squeezy containers for things that I use a lot olive oil balsamic vinegar my own salad dressing that kind of thing and most of the squeeze bottles are you know twelve ounces eight ounces they're really short which means you're losing a lot of capacity because you have all the space above them so I searched high and far and I found these I was very excited to find these they are pricey be warned I think they're used in restaurants these are they come in multiple sizes I'm using the 16 ounce because I found from a height variance on that top shelf these were perfect this is where I like them there's squeezy bottles there's two different colors the yellow ones I believe are for super thin liquids and the blue ones are for slightly thicker sauces and what I really like about them is you can unscrew at the bottom and the top which means you can really get in there and clean these out because that's a big problem with a lot of squeezy bottles so big yay for me I did a test first time out I was very skeptical I'm like I don't know about these guys you're supposed to store them like this so that the liquid is always ready you just grab and go and you just go I did a test with water and I stored it in here and I drove forever with a paper towel underneath paper towel was not wet but what I do even though that test worked I still wasn't about to trust this tiny little valve in my jiggly refrigerator but the beautiful part about this is you can store them like that just make sure that that is super tight and you can fit a whole bunch of these in that top shelf and have large amounts of condiments liquids and sauces traveling with you not taking up very much room so very excited to find these 16 ounces so while I'm on the subject of the refrigerator door it's kind of skinny you can't fit a regular fruit or milk jug in the door it's not wide enough so again my dilemma was to find something where I would be maximizing capacity I found a lot of things that were skinny enough to fit I actually use these for a long time I had a couple and once again I used my little handy dandy hair ties as my identifier and these worked really well but I still had about this much space left on that bottom shelf where I wasn't using that so I became somewhat obsessed to find the perfect container and I did find something better use of the Nalgene containers and this is the 48 ounce container so I can fit four of these in that bottom door and 48 ounces is four of my green juice drinks so you have that in the dorm are taking up all that space or one of these it's pretty much a no-brainer so 48 ounces it's just shy of one and a half liters for those of you that are leader oriented really really awesome find that they aren't plastic they are intended to be used for liquids so it's a good plastic I feel comfortable using this very very handy to have so I was excited to find these the door gets a little heavy I am a little concerned about that I have not had a problem so far but I am careful when I'm opening and closing it just a little FYI so yay for the liquids let's talk about the freezer the teeny tiny freezer i long ago gave up actually trying to freeze anything in it at best what I tried to do is just keep frozen foods frozen for as long as I can it's a tricky thing with these fridges if you don't have a completely separate compartment which is what I would love to have with a separate controller and a separate compressor condenser whatever runs a refrigerator it's a delicate balance between free singing irregular food in your fridge and keeping the things in your freezer frozen so what I do instead is with the ice cubes I use these guys they've been very successful for me there are little plastic cubes filled with liquid they keep it nice and cold they come in this container but I don't use this container I find it too bulky so I actually just keep them in little bags like this honey recommend those very helpful so I have a number of these this is missing the little spout I have that in the RV somewhere but these are the little rods that you freeze and then you put inside a bottle and then you can pour from the spout in the bottle these are really really great because they're metal they keep cold for a nice long time I have a bunch of these and if I have a glass of iced tea or something and I want to get it cooled pretty quickly I just stick a bunch of these in there and stir it around until the temperature drops um so highly recommend pretty handy to have I have one of these it's one of the Zoku things it has this inner lining that you're supposed to put in a freezer and it freezes and then you can make ice tea I've used it it's working well it's pretty bulky so the verdict is still out as to whether I'm going to keep it in my freezer but it does get things cold fairly quickly so pretty handy to have like I said Britax still out finally I do keep a hot cold gel pack in there I have a cold one in the freezer and I have one in a cupboard for the hot sections these come in handy when you need them what I do tend to do I like to make my own broths and sauces and things like that so when I'm cooking at home I always make sure that I take some of those smaller baggies that I showed you earlier these are the ones from the dollar store they also just make little snack baggies and I always make a couple of whatever I'm making I film them with these and I stick them in the freezer so if I'm going off on a trip I can grab a couple of these out of my freezer at home and stick them in the little freezer in the RV and I have some ready-made sauces meals and soups to go handy little trip and finally if I'm putting things in the freezer I like these stasher bags I know that most of you are familiar with them they come in multiple sizes these are great you can boil them freeze them stick them in the fridge you can wash them out I use these a lot they hold a lot and they work really well in the freezer and I've just discovered the smaller size which is why this one is still in the package and this these are going to be great for me for my sauces etc so I am very excited to find this size I can put a bunch of these in the freezer and then yes I always had a little bottle of vodka in the freezer because that's where vodka belongs so that's my freezer so here's the secret to how I can fit large quantities of fresh food in that tiny fridge I love farmer's markets I go every chance I get and very often I will end up with large bulky quantities of herbs or leafy greens and things like that pretty much I plan on chopping all of those down when I cook so what I've started doing is I literally chopped them down before I store them and that allows me to put really large quantities into tiny little things but when you're coming home with an enormous bag of basil chopping up my hand can take forever I found this little gadget and it's a lifesaver I've already chopped most of the basil that I brought home that was in that big pile this huge bag but I'm going to show you I can do it with tomatoes too so the basil that I did chopped I ended up putting it in my little baggies and I can keep it like this very often I'll make pesto's which I'll just make the whole pesto and put it in a baggie if I want this basil to stay a little bit longer I'll squirt a little bit of olive oil into my bag and that just helps for some reason it helps keep it longer that way and if I'm cooking I don't mind a little olive oil going in my food so this is the simplest way to take an enormous bushel of any kind of green item and store it in a really small amount of space that giant bag of basil ended up taking up like four of these little bags so super helpful the other thing I do I like to use herbs I actually grow them inside my RV and when they get a little wild and wooly I have to store them somehow and so I found there's many different kinds of herb keepers this is the one that I use it does fit in the refrigerator door I keep it out a lot of times and it has a little well area for water at the bottom this just allows them to last that much longer so I'm just gonna show you how crazy this little hopper is I'm gonna make some chopped these tomatoes up real quick if you are outside camping and you have a hankering for salsa really just I've got a wonky table you literally just go ahead and look I literally have salsa now so you can put onions basil tomato in there little lime juice a minute you have some salsa what I do like about the system is you can take the blade out and it comes with three of these and lift you can put the lid on stick that in your fridge call it a day I know this looks a little bit like an infomercial but I was very very excited about this so I wanted to share it with you let's get this out of the way so the other thing I use a lot of are these little string bags I keep all of my fruits and veggies that do not need refrigeration in these and I have hooks in my little kitchen and that's where I hang them if I'm going over really rocky terrain sometimes they knock against the wall and I'll just pull this down and stick it in my sink for that little bit of travel but this allows me to have large quantities of fresh fruits and veggies which I really love um so those are the tips and tricks on how I put all that food in my little fridge I'm gonna clear away my table and I'm gonna bring out my little baskets loaded with all that food and show you how that worked out so here we have it I have in my bottom of my refrigerator my two little baskets I have my fruits in here and my little salsa that I made is fitting in here so that's on one side on the other side I have all of my dairy I even am able to store one of those giant hunks of cheese that you can get from one of those big box stores so there's an awful lot of dairy and cheese in that compartment my next shelf up I have my main compartment which is where I have most of my proteins I have eggs I have sausages there's pasta here Elfi and I eat a lot of carrots I keep it in the stash your bag I even have my little containers with I have one thing of arugula that I haven't we packed because I'm having a big salad when I'm done with this video it's my little treat so I'm gonna be taking that out in a minute and consuming it but that is literally my second shelf and then that funny little top shelf that I told you I made this is what I have on it I have two sodas the other ones in case anybody is a soda drinker I have a beer in there I have some handmade ice tea that I have and I have my in there if I'm travelling in the RV and I'm keeping it really cool with the a/c I can take these out and put other things in there in the fridge but for the most part I leave these in there just in case they were the RV gets hot and then in my door my RV door I have oil I have salad dressing I have eight condiments so these are in my top shelf with room for a beer which I've already started drinking and then in the bottom shelf on the refrigerator door I normally have two of these one has water one has my green juice which is the equivalent of four of those little ones I showed you I have one with milk and I have a fourth one which you know depending on who I'm with or what I'm doing it'll have some other form of liquid in it very often it has cold brewed coffee in there so literally that is how I am able to put all of that in my tiny little refrigerator and don't forget I have stuff in the freezer too which I showed you so I hope you found these tips helpful and that they make life a little bit easier for you in your RV adventures hope to see you along the way bye bye anyway that out of the way let's talk about glass in an RV in an RV fridge when you are not on smoother than smooth surface you're gonna have a lot of this as you rattle down the road and it will drive you bonkers so I've discovered a super easy trick I have hair ties in abundance because I use them every day and what I decided one day was to just start using hair ties on my glass if you are unfamiliar with hair ties we'll know that some of them come with a fabric type coating on them and some of them come where they are strictly bare rubber I use the bare with rubber ones for my glass that way if I get them wet or I spill food on them I can just rinse them under the water to get them clean so what I do is I just randomly put two or three of these depending on the size of the glass on the bottles oops and that way when they are sitting next to each other in the refrigerator and you're going down the road they're not going to touch no more rattling you can apply that to any kind of glassware that you have in your refrigerator you

Channel: CrazyLadyCrankyDog

Views: 128,187

Rating: 4.9317012 out of 5

Keywords: Class B RV, Hymer Aktiv, Campervan, Crazy Lady Cranky Dog, rv fridge storage ideas, fridge organization, rv refrigerator tips, rv tips tricks and hacks, rv kitchen, campervan cooking, rv organization hacks, rv kitchen organization ideas, rv storage slide out trays, food storage hacks, corado axion fridge, rv fridge tips and tricks, rv fridge tips, dometic fridge, rv food hacks, rv freezer, rv fridge mods, rv fridge hacks, rv fridge organization, rv storage

Id: tUL6B0nPHlc

Length: 36min 19sec (2179 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 15 2019