If you have a chest freezer, how do you organise it?

[FelixFelix]

I've always had upright freezers with various drawers, but inherited a chest freezer with our current house and I really dislike it. It's full of stuff but I can never seem to find anything!

I've found that things end up making their way to the bottom, never to be seen again. I'm going to have a clear out this weekend as I've got food that has been in there since after we moved in a year ago and it will need chucking.

Does anyone have any good tips on how to keep it organised? I generally have lots of meat (takes up the majority of the space) fish, some fruit & veg, herbs, ice cubes, a pizza/fish fingers/a couple of other similar bits, ice pops/ice creams in there. Possibly some bread or crumpets etc that I've needed to freeze. It's seriously irritating me!

I used different colour LARGE plastic bags - so bread was in the yellow one, veg in green one etc etc.

Only worked if everyone was good at putting things away properly. Or if no one else but me went into it.

Still ended up doing what I always refer to as "freezer mining" when looking for stuff!!

Opened bags of things go in the basket thing that rests in the top

Opened boxes go toward the front and unopened things toward the back

Buy some big things (like bread whole chickens) to fill up the space

Spend the first 2 weeks of the month filling the freezer up (and eating obveously), then eat the freezer virtually empty for the last 2 weeks

Maryz that's my style at the moment

I like the idea of colour coded bags. It's only me that goes in it really - very occasionally DP will but he would conform to the freezer rules.

I use different heavy weight plastic bags. Its very easy to get what you need. We have - potato products, veg open, veg unopened, vegetarian, vegan, puddings and bread etc. Makes it very easy to defrost as well.

I keep stuff in hessian bags, so one for veggies, one for loose meat etc, then boxes/cartons are stacked underneath. DH only ever goes in it for pizzas, which I keep on the top to stop him raking through!