Grim reason why you should never keep your milk in fridge door

Keeping your fridge tidy may seem like one of the simplest household chores out there, but even when we’ve got the best intentions it feels impossible to not let it grow into a condiment graveyard.

Those limp carrots hanging out at the bottom of the veg drawer always feel like a tomorrow problem, while the leftovers from last week aren’t going to get thrown out anytime soon.

But it turns out there’s something you can do to help yourself before it all starts to kick off in there.

How tidy is your fridge? (Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)

According to white goods and electronics brand Beko – which knows a thing or two about fridges – you should always consider exactly where you’re putting different types of food and drink.

"It can be tempting just to throw your weekly shop willy nilly into your refrigerator and assume it’ll all be ‘cold enough’,” it says on its website.

“The thing is that some parts of your refrigerator are cooler than others, so lend themselves to different types of food."

Many of us might be tempted to put milk on the shelf often found in the fridge door, often because other shelves in the main body of the fridge aren’t tall enough to store it without putting the carton on its side.

But the experts at Beko reckon the best place is actually any of the middle shelves.

“This is the ideal spot for dairy products such as milk, yoghurt and cheese,” it says.

“Eggs also like this [shelf] because it provides a nice, constant temperature.”

It turns out there's an art to organising your fridge (lisegagne/Getty Images)

The fridge door, meanwhile, is actually the ‘warmest part of your refrigerator’, which means ‘items with natural preservatives like jams and condiments’ are best kept here.

Meanwhile, the drawers are perfect for storing fruit, veg, salad and herbs (just remember to eat those carrots before they go floppy), and bottom shelves are the coldest so best for raw meat and fish.

“Keeping all your raw meat on one [shelf] also help prevent any cross-contamination,” Beko added.

As with the fridge door, the top shelf is ‘a little warmer’, so ‘foods that don’t need cooking are best put here’, including cooked and cured meats, leftovers or pre-cooked meals.

Beko’s other tips also included keeping raw fish and meat wrapped, using glass containers to store food as this retains cold better, setting your fridge between 1°C and 4°C and keeping salad and herbs away from the back wall of the fridge as this can actually freeze them.

Avocados, bananas, nectarines, peaches, pears, plums and tomatoes should also never be kept in the fridge because they release gasses that may cause other foods to spoil.