Freezer Meals - What's In There?

One of the challenges that I used to face with freezer meals is keeping track of what I had in each container. I would know what it was when it went in, but over time it would get shifted in the freezer and I would find myself wondering if it was sloppy joes, or chili, or spaghetti sauce with meat.

I found the answer to my problem back in chemistry lab in high school. And, to be honest, I found the answer when I was trying to solve the dilemma of marking bottles - both as I placed them in my freezer, but also as I sent them to day care. (It wasn't until my second child that I discovered using bags to store the milk.) I needed to know when the milk was from so that I could rotate properly in both the refrigerator and freezer. I wanted something that I could easily read, would hold up to refrigerating and freezing/thawing, wouldn't wipe off during storage, but could wipe off later.

For whatever reason, I thought of those black wax pencils that had the paper wrapper and the string that you used to peel the paper to reveal more of the black wax pencil. We used them for marking beakers and test tubes in chemistry. The problem was I could describe it well, but didn't know what they were actually called or where to find them. After some searching, we were able to find them. Turns out that they are grease pencils and/or china markers. They worked wonderful for marking the bottles.

Once I had a couple, I recognized that they worked well for marking my food containers for storage as well. Now, when I have leftovers to freeze or make extra to freeze, I can easily mark what the contents are and when they were placed in the freezer.

Works for me!

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.