Fridge vs freezer

[wineandwalter]

Talk to me about your storage organization!

I was super unorganized and not well coached when I started EPing (LO was three days old and we spent another week at the hospital and life was crazy). I have a pretty good freezer stash built up but I never got in a real routine of tracking output vs intake or any other info. She is now 7 weeks old and I'm still making a little more than she needs each day and still pumping about 7-8 ppd.

I have no system in my head for knowing what milk to put in the fridge, what to freeze, or what to use that day. How many extra bottles/ounces do you guys keep in the fridge? How do you decide what to freeze each day? Do you have a genius system for rotating milk that you put in the fridge?

Tl;dr: EPing is hard work and I need to get my ass organized. Help!

[abbalish]

I use this in the fridge:
Medela Breast Milk Storage Solution www.amazon.com/dp/B006R3KBYO/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_NbE0vbKQQBNKR

The dated caps are helpful, especially when we started at daycare and the bottles have to be labeled with the expression date. I typically keep 5-6 bottles in the fridge (maybe 25-30oz, depending how much is in each bottle), and freeze the rest. With daycare it's a little trickier since I send 4 4oz bottles each day (she drinks 3 but I like sending an extra) so sometimes that almost wipes out what I've got in the fridge. I pump into and feed from Medela bottles at home but we send Avent bottles to daycare or else I wouldn't have enough bottles to pump into while she's at daycare.

When I freeze milk I almost always freeze freshly pumped, since my whole system is FIFO. I use NUK brand bags (love those!), label with the date, and freeze flat. Once frozen I toss it into a big ziploc bag, and once the bag gets full I transfer all of it to a shoebox, and line the bags up in date order.

[Widget123]

I generally do the FIFO system too unless I know we are leaving the house soon or that LO will eat soon and in that case will save s bottle's worth. It's best to freeze milk as soon as it's pumped vs refrigerated first. I never keep more than a day or two's worth of milk in the fridge at a time. I just started back at work again and getting used to this LO's demands at daycare so I have a little more on hand than usual. I'm really bad at rotating freezer milk, but I do freeze flat and organize in larger containers.

[jennadesigns]

I have 650 oz. in my freezer stash. I use Lansinoh bags and freeze flat in 3.5 and 4 oz. portions. I use the gift bag storage system:
greenlitebites.com/2011/06/breast-milk-storage/

It makes it really easy to see what is the oldest in your stash. I pull the oldest and send that to daycare each week.

I usually keep a couple bottle's worth of milk in the fridge. I leave for work at 1:30 a.m., so I'll pump before I go and leave that in the fridge for DH to give to baby in the morning before she goes to daycare.