A freezer full of unidentifiable blocks is not a store cupboard, it is a waiting room. Used properly it is the single best tool against food waste, and the difference comes down to what you put in and how.
What freezes well
Bread, cooked rice and pasta, raw and cooked meat, stock, soups, stews, sauces, cheese for cooking, milk, butter, chopped herbs in oil, most fruit, and almost any leftover meal. Anything you would reheat rather than eat cold generally freezes without complaint.
What does not
Foods that are mostly water and eaten raw: lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes for salad, whole potatoes. The ice crystals rupture the cell walls and they thaw limp. Cream sauces and yoghurt can split. Fried food loses its crust. None of this is dangerous — it is just disappointing, and disappointing food gets thrown away too.
Freeze flat, in portions you will actually use
A single large block takes hours to thaw and forces you to use all of it. Freeze in meal-sized portions, flat in bags, and they stack, thaw in minutes and cost nothing to change your mind about. Label with what it is and the date. Every unlabelled container eventually becomes rubbish, because nobody serves a mystery for dinner.
Thaw in the fridge, not on the counter
Slow thawing in the fridge keeps the food out of the temperature range where bacteria multiply. Plan it the night before, or reheat straight from frozen for soups, stews and sauces. Do not refreeze something that has thawed fully unless you have cooked it in between.
Flat portions, labelled, thawed in the fridge. The freezer is where the food you were going to waste goes to become next week’s dinner.