Storage: Eggs!

As my kids get older, the amount of food we consume has increased.  One grocery item specifically is eggs. We can go through a dozen eggs in about two days depending on what I'm cooking. Because of this, I've started buying eggs from a wholesaler near us. I can get 30 eggs for $2. These are not the kind of eggs I would be making homemade mayonnaise with or using raw, but for how I use eggs, they fit the budget and work for us. 

Because of our refrigerator is constantly holding over 15 eggs at a time, I needed a better way to store them. Back in April/May, we were at the store browsing and came across egg drawers. The idea was cool but I couldn't fork over the money. They were around $12 each to store 18 eggs. The plastic felt thin and cheap. Some of the ones on the shelf were already cracked. I looked online to see what else was out there and found ones sold at The Container Store. These were over $20 each. We didn't end up purchasing anything. 

Earlier this month, we were facing an egg surplus in our refrigerator. I always like to have eggs on hand because they're an easy meal-maker if I don't feel like doing any serious cooking. This time though, I overdid it a bit. We still had eggs at home and I added to our collection by buying another 2.5 dozen from the store. What resulted was 43 eggs in our refrigerator at one time. 

I saved egg cartons from the stores that hold two dozen, but I didn't have enough to hold all 43 eggs. What resulted was a weird mishmash of three containers in our refrigerator to hold them all.  

Chaos.

Storing these eggs precariously in our refrigerator like this drastically reduced our storage space. I couldn't put anything on top of the eggs in this level anymore. It is true this setup doesn't stay forever as we eat the eggs, but it does make for an inconvenient use of our refrigerator for at least a few days. As we ate the eggs, I rearranged them in the fridge to be more organized, but even so, it wasn't ideal. 

I was able to consolidate the eggs to one side of the shelf, but still 
couldn't stack anything on top. The ones in the bowl are raw.

After enduring these days of precariously storing eggs in our refrigerator, I decided again to look online to see what was out there. I remember seeing The Container Store advertise their big clearance event. I had even browsed a few pages of their clearance online for fun but didn't see anything worth purchasing. This time, I searched their egg storage again. Did I get lucky?

I did! They were 70% off regular retail so I was able to get two for the price of one. I've purchased their brand of organizational bins before so I knew their plastic quality was much better than the ones I'd seen at the other store a few months prior. I ordered two of them and waited patiently for my in-store pickup confirmation. The eggs in my refrigerator are now organized nice and neatly in two stacks of 18 (when maxed out).

Open.

Closed. I should probably remove the front stickers...

 

I am super happy with how this turned out! I have room for 3 dozen eggs in my refrigerator now, and if somehow I happen to have overflow, they're going to live on top for a little bit in my half dozen carton. It is true my refrigerator will have two egg drawers taking up space on this shelf even if I have zero eggs in my refrigerator. The likelihood of that is pretty slim though. Regardless, this organization works for us because I know exactly how much space I have in my refrigerator to use and it will not be affected by how many eggs I need to store. 

If you want your own egg storage drawers at a good price, they still have some left (in my area)! Not sponsored by The Container Store.