We had a large chest-style freezer.... I hated it once the kids moved out-- they were willing to dig to find what I requested, but managing the contents was an ongoing pain in the ass and believe me, I tried all the ways to organize it that there are, including milk crates. (It died in a flood in the basement.)
Even for a good organizer, I recommend a standup. You'll waste less food, unless you are a committed gardener with huge harvests to manage who prefers freezig to canning (I do). I especially did not enjoy any of the starch-included meals I made in bulk in those years, to freeze. Potatoes, pasta-- undercooked, whatever-- it all came out crappy. Only the meats are worth the bother, IMO, and a few types of starchless meals. It's easy to boil up pasta for two, or nuke a couple of boiling potatoes to slice into gravy.
Cornstarch gravy freezes and thaws better than flour-based. Yesterdays' thawed, sliced potroast was delicious. The gravy I'd included kept the meat nice, but didn't come out like gravy at all.
Anyway, all of this is going on in a Granny Freezer-- a standup freezer.... that we got for free... that had been someone's grandmother's.... from Freecycle! It's not even a particularly large one. If it were a fridge, it would be what you call "apartment" size. Not a bar fridge, but this freezer is only about 5' tall with 3 shelves plus "floor space" that forms a 4th shelf. Door shelves hold quart-size canning jars or equivalent containers.
When it dies, we'll lay out for a new, energy-efficient one in the same size, I like it so well. It would fit in a closet-- a factor for many of us to consider.
Oh yeah-- you can run an extension cord into a closet. This one runs on an appliance- weight ext. cord because there is not enough power where I wanted to put it.
Oh well, I'll describe how I handle organizing the freezer, too. :~)
I am constantly reminded how many people there are nowadays who didn't grow up handling food or household chores like a farmer. But that's why I post. If even one lower-income person can benefit from this, or teach me a trick, it's worth my posting time. It helps encourage me to see someone else post in here, BTW, since Mudcat doesn't show how many "views" a thread gets. But if folkies aren't likely to be "low-income," I dunno who is! :~)
I label hardly any of the following. WHERE it is tells me most of what I need to know. I sometimes can put my hand on a permanent marker, but......
There's one freezer shelf each for Beef, Poultry, Pork.
Each shelf has a box on one side that is where the already-cooked materials go, packed upright like file folders in freezer Ziplocs (the regular ones crack so do not re-use well), except the beef because the beef is better stored raw for thaw/cook.
I buy the chix, turx, etc. on sale when I see it in the weekly grocery flyer. I buy without regard to what we "need" because eventually it all works out.
I get a grocery check every two weeks. My butcher works with me-- if he has chuck roasts on sale, I'll call and order my 20 lbs so he can add it to his order. He's happy to hold it for my prefered pickup date (paycheck date), and to cut and pack it as I want. He loves it that I handle it in bulk because it saves on his packaging materials costs! He's just the meat dept. guy at a small mom-and-pop grocery, but he knows meat.
If I have time I'll precook and portion-pack the meats as described upthread (NOT the grill-quality beef). If it's a busy time of year I'll just toss them right in, raw.
I usually break down the beef before I freeze it, into two-portion packets. I use whatever I have on hand to accomplish that; the bitty blade steaks (stripe of edible gristle down the center) that have GREAT flavor, and are usually about $3/lb, come in a large flat pack. I shake the flat while fresh to separate the contents into 3 or more 2-person batches right in the cello wrapper, and toss it in. (When I want to thaw the portions I'll use a knife to cut off the styro section I want, bag the rest still on the flat, and toss it back in.)
The larger steaks/hamburg get divided up into freezer paper, wax paper, or ziploc-- whatever I found recently on sale. Hamburg may be pressed into a cookie sheet first to cut up into square burgers for individual-wrap (freeze in uncovered sheet for 2 hours and then crack apart and pack with wax-paper separators, when frozen), or it may go in 3-lb packs for meatloaf, or it may get cooked and bagged for crock-pot spaghetti-sauce portions.
I use any leftover plastic on hand to wrap batches of packets. It takes very little time to do all this: I try to limit my purchases to about 20-30 lbs. More than that takes two people to process; I just about died managing the beef-stock this week.
If there is something unusual I will label it, but for the most part meat is meat, and when I thaw it I'll see what cut it was and cook/warm it accordingly.
It's simple enough to thaw the right amount, because it's all in two-person packs. If there's company, I just thaw more. Anything not consumed at the meal can be shredded down for lunches and eaten in a few days or refrozen.
Lunch/breakfast materials go in the small freezer section in the kitchen fridge-- so I can easily access them and toss 'em in a cooler for portability, nuke-thaw them for a big brekky, etc., so I like to keep them handy and not have to wreck my knee going to the granny freezer.
A nice side benfit of all of this is that without a kitchen scale, it's easy to keep an eye on portion sizes and therefore calorie control. For me, dieting means remembering TO eat, not preventing excess eating. But in either case, if it's been thawed and cooked, then that's what there is to eat. Eat it. If it's a small portion, good! That's what all that Romaine is for! If it's not "enough," there's usually wholegrain bread or cornbread for a milky snack later, easily thawed by the piece!
Brunch today was a pork & cheese panini on oatbread with a TINY amount of shredded cheese to bind the slivered pork together. The pork thawed right in the warming-up panini press (thank you Santa), while I got the rest of the ingredients organized and ready to go.
Spend a morning watching a grill cook at a diner do his/her work, and soon you too can eat (and feed your honeylove) like royalty for pennies! I cannot recall the last time making dinner started with rounding up all the raw materials for an entree. With a busy pastor-husband whose "schedule" may require a big dinner at midnight, this is GREAT. It will snow tonight; he'll need a lot of food when he plows the big farm driveway tomorrow with the little lawn tractor. I think I'll go soak some beans..... I dunno when they'll be soft enough to eat, but I know what I'll do with them, when they are!