First in, first out
FIFO is the entire discipline: new items go to the back or bottom, older items move forward, and the next thing you use is the oldest thing of its kind. It works only if you can tell items apart — which means every package carries a name and a frozen date (the Label Generator makes this a ten-second habit).
Zone the space
Give each category a fixed home: baskets or bins for meat, vegetables, prepared meals, and bread. In a chest freezer, hang baskets for small and current items and reserve the deep bottom for long-storage bulk. In a drawer freezer, one drawer per category and bags filed vertically like folders — visible spines beat archaeology.
Keep the inventory outside the freezer
The freezer’s contents should be knowable without opening it. The private Freezer Inventory keeps the list on your device — items, portions, locations, frozen dates, and quality targets — and the Use-First Dashboard turns it into tonight’s answer to “what should we eat?” A paper list taped to the door works too; the failure mode of every system is the same: not updating it when you take something out.
A quarterly sweep
Four times a year, list everything past its quality target and plan a week of meals around it. Quality-target-passed food is not unsafe — it is simply first in line.