Does your collection of food storage look a little rough? Can you just never find what you need? And you have no matching lids, but plenty of lids in the cabinet? I found a solution! Or, at least one that helps me out. And you don’t have to spend a dime to buy a new system or matching containers.
Start by pulling out ALL of your containers.
Next, match what you can. I just created different piles of lids and containers. Don’t try to match the lid to the container yet, just get all like pieces together.
Once you have everything sorted, match lids to containers. It will be much easier now that you can see everything at once and you won’t try the same container 5 times.
Once you have everything matched up, set aside anything odd pieces and leftovers. Now, taking one pile at a time, label matching containers and lids. I used the alphabet, but you could number them too. All my bowls of this size got marked with an “A” on the bottom, and the matching lids got “A” on the top. I just used a permanent marker, and it hasn’t come off in the dishwasher yet!
Every container and matching lid got a letter.
Once everything was labeled, they all stacked neatly and nested within each other.
Which made my cabinet look a lot better.
Once they were all nested, they became much easier to store. I put my small containers for leftovers in the kitchen drawers, my medium containers for individual meals in one of the cabinets, and my large containers for freezer meals I moved out of the kitchen entirely- they are stacked on a shelf next to the deep freezer in the garage. This has saved me a ton of kitchen space, but also a ton of time. With the containers and matching lids all labeled, there’s no longer a fight to find what I need. You could even store all your lids in a bin standing up, and just thumb through the corners to find the letter you need. There are several possibilities, so just find a system that works for you.