NYT Article on famlies with multiple fridges and freezers

[norajean]

I spent yesterday removing and disassembling a broken Subzero ice machine in our pantry. I can’t imagine why the original owners of this house needed that much ice on top of what the refrigerator makes. I don’t need more pantry cupboards so I guess I will fill the hole with a wine cooler.

We also have an an obvious space in the mud room for a freezer or second refrigerator.  Despite living in a decidedly rural settting, we are only ten minutes from two Safeway stores. So,I can’t see storing more food here.

[Michael in ABQ]

We have a second full size refrigerator and freezer in our garage. We're a family of 8 and this allows us to only go grocery shopping once a week. One week we go to Costco and stock up with 8 gallons of milk, a box of 15-dozen eggs, etc. The next week we go to the commissary and get most of our normal groceries including all our meat and most fruits and vegetables (though Costco fruits and vegetables are almost always better).

The second fridge is great for storing leftovers too. And I do keep some beers in the door.


Growing up my parents had an upright second freezer in the garage. I think it's actually still working some 30+ years later.

[bacchi]

My parents have a huge fridge in the kitchen. It's half full of expired condiments.

The upright freezer in the garage stores expired frozen foods that they try to serve when I visit. Bleck.

The mini-fridge in the utility room has sodas and juice.

America!

[Just Joe]

I want visit everyone here and see what you do with your ingredients. This person buys multiples of something and that person barely buys any. Curious what everyone's meals look like.

[bacchi]

Growing up my parents had an upright second freezer in the garage. I think it's actually still working some 30+ years later.

My parents have an ancient upright in the garage too.

My dad keeps it closed with a strap. I'm sure it uses more energy than the HVAC.

[JLee]

I want visit everyone here and see what you do with your ingredients. This person buys multiples of something and that person barely buys any. Curious what everyone's meals look like.

Last night we had sandwiches with Costco ciabatta rolls from earlier this week, mushrooms and cheese from a same-day grocery store trip, and smoked sausages that went in the freezer months ago (from a bulk Costco or Restaurant Depot purchase).

[ixtap]

Why isn’t an onion considered a vegetable by Americans? If it isn’t a vegetable, what it is?

So that they can complain when foreigners use too much of them and make.things smell like onion.

It is a condiment, I guess. After all, we do out some raw onion out for chili dogs...

We eat plenty of onions. Fiber! Antioxidants! Must be a veggie! We are a household of two and I buy onions at Costco. We went without for two weeks and I am think of roasting onion for dinner tonight now that we have them again.

[charis]

I want visit everyone here and see what you do with your ingredients. This person buys multiples of something and that person barely buys any. Curious what everyone's meals look like.

Recent meals:
-A chicken chowder using frozen stock, chicken breasts, veggies from chest freeze thrown into crock pot
-Pizza using dough, cheese, sauce, pepperoni from freezer
-casserole and spanish rice featuring frozen veg

[robartsd]

I think North American electricity prices are generally lower than European electricity prices, so it isn't as cost prohibitive to have more refrigerated storage space. I agree that more refrigerator space may lead to more wasted food; but most people with secondary a fridge that I know normally just store beverages that could be safely stored at room temperature but are preferably served chilled. I find that extra freezer space is much more valuable than refrigerator space and chest freezers are generally pretty efficient. I have a typical large American fridge in the kitchen and a fairly small chest freezer in the "basement" (not a true basement, but deep area of my crawl space). I would like an upright freezer as things don't freeze quickly in a chest freezer, so an upright would make preserving via freezing much easier; bonus if the upright could be switched to refrigerate if we needed extra fridge space for a party.

[GreenToTheCore]

Why isn’t an onion considered a vegetable by Americans? If it isn’t a vegetable, what it is?

So that they can complain when foreigners use too much of them and make.things smell like onion.

It is a condiment, I guess. After all, we do out some raw onion out for chili dogs...

We eat plenty of onions. Fiber! Antioxidants! Must be a veggie! We are a household of two and I buy onions at Costco. We went without for two weeks and I am think of roasting onion for dinner tonight now that we have them again.

Wait, when did onions get kicked off the vegetable list?

[Splashncash]

But the freezers - meat from Costco or bulk meat from the grocery store, put up into individual serving sizes.  All the frozen beans/tomatoes/dried tomatoes/sliced sweet peppers/zucchini/baked winter squash from  the garden.  Before I started curb-side pickup I was only grocery shopping every third week, so frozen vegetables (not the kinds I had grown) for when the fresh ran out.  What else?  Frozen yogurt starter.  Chopped garlic to preserve garlic that wants to sprout.  Frozen bone broth.  Frozen individual meal servings so I don't have to eat the same thing for a few days in a row.  Frozen muffins (my banana muffins made with almond flour freeze really well).  Plus a bag of frozen corn kernels to use as an ice pack. 

Wait a minute, @RetiredAt63, I can chop my garlic and then freeze it in portion sizes??  Man, I love this forum.  Learning new things ALL the time.  Thank you!

[therethere]

Wait a minute, @RetiredAt63, I can chop my garlic and then freeze it in portion sizes??  Man, I love this forum.  Learning new things ALL the time.  Thank you!

I buy one of the peeled garlic packages from Sam's Club every few months. Put it in the blender with some olive oil. Then freeze it in quart bags flattened so you can break off chunks. It's less potent than fresh, but so much easier.

[MudPuppy]

I want visit everyone here and see what you do with your ingredients. This person buys multiples of something and that person barely buys any. Curious what everyone's meals look like.

I love creeping on other people’s groceries and meals.



We have just a regular fridge. We had a small deep freeze at one point but no real spot to keep it in our house now. I try not to keep too much fridge/frozen on hand anyway since it ends up expensive when you lose power for too long.

[GuitarStv]

Why isn’t an onion considered a vegetable by Americans? If it isn’t a vegetable, what it is?

So that they can complain when foreigners use too much of them and make.things smell like onion.

It is a condiment, I guess. After all, we do out some raw onion out for chili dogs...

We eat plenty of onions. Fiber! Antioxidants! Must be a veggie! We are a household of two and I buy onions at Costco. We went without for two weeks and I am think of roasting onion for dinner tonight now that we have them again.

Wait, when did onions get kicked off the vegetable list?

Some vegetables are only just hanging on as vegetables . . . onions have a better hold on the title than potatoes in my mind though.  :P

[Dicey]

Ahahaha! I am so busted! We have a oounter depth fridge. "Counter depth" is code for half the space and twice the cost, lol. I joke that 90% of households with counter-depth fridges have a backup in the garage.

I'm a Costco Shopper and Pantry Principle adherent. We have a small-ish (15cf?) freezer over fridge in the garage that holds things like Costco milk, yogurt, eggs, and bulk purchased Grocery Outlet bargains (Cheese! Hummus! Lunchbox Supplies!) Next to that is an even smaller (13cf?) upright freezer for meats, frozen veg, flour, yeast, bread, etc. We had a larger one (19cf?) in the garage for a while, but I cleaned it out and sold it for $150 early in the pandemic.

I was feeling pretty okay that were "down" to three, but then I remembered we have one of those stupid wine fridges in our kitchen. We don't drink booze or soda, so most of what's in it were gifts or things we used to serve to guests, ugh. Recently, I put two packages of chocolate in it, which is a much better use, IMO. Also, I mostly ignore that fridge, which makes it an excellent chocolate hiding place. Of course, the silly (for us) wine fridge was in the house when we bought it.

So there you have it: five pre-pandemic, "only" four now. Mitigating factor: Except for three Costco take-out pizzas,  we have prepared all of our meals at home for a year.

[dcheesi]

My parents had ginormous chest freezer in the garage; the kind you could easily fit a side of beef into. It was from the '60s or '70s, and it was always full. Probably 80% of the stuff in it never got used; just slowly turned to permafrost in the bottom. We used to joke that if you dug deep enough, you'd find some nice Brontosaurus steaks down there!

[RetiredAt63]

But the freezers - meat from Costco or bulk meat from the grocery store, put up into individual serving sizes.  All the frozen beans/tomatoes/dried tomatoes/sliced sweet peppers/zucchini/baked winter squash from  the garden.  Before I started curb-side pickup I was only grocery shopping every third week, so frozen vegetables (not the kinds I had grown) for when the fresh ran out.  What else?  Frozen yogurt starter.  Chopped garlic to preserve garlic that wants to sprout.  Frozen bone broth.  Frozen individual meal servings so I don't have to eat the same thing for a few days in a row.  Frozen muffins (my banana muffins made with almond flour freeze really well).  Plus a bag of frozen corn kernels to use as an ice pack. 

Wait a minute, @RetiredAt63, I can chop my garlic and then freeze it in portion sizes??  Man, I love this forum.  Learning new things ALL the time.  Thank you!

I chop and then put lots in a freezer baggie and lay flat.  What I want breaks off easily.  You can do it with onions too.  Both freeze well with no blanching, you just can't use them "fresh".  I only blanch sweet peppers to take up less space, they freeze fine without blanching as well.

Freezing and dehydrating are both fast (prep time) easy preserving methods.  I can my relish because by the time it is cooked it is easy to take the extra step to can (water bath method).  I've made spaghetti sauce from dehydrated tomatoes (not the store bought sun dried cherry tomatoes in oil) and it was fine.

[Chris22]

We have three fridges and am awaiting a fourth (small wine fridge). 

Our last house came with old white appliances, and of course that was unacceptable to my wife, so we got new stainless ones. I sold off the others on c-list but the fridge went into the garage, partially as my beer fridge and partially as overflow because we had a 7/8ths scale fridge in the kitchen due to the opening being small (appliance store only had one fridge that just baarely fit in the spot.

So then we moved, new house had a side by side in the kitchen, and then a big newer stainless steel French door fridge in the basement, guess someone had it and didn’t like it and moved it downstairs?  I dunno. That basement fridge holds primarily beer, Costco overflow, frozen meals (make a lasagna instead of in a 9x13 make it in two smaller pans and eat half/freeze half).  It also holds the kids’ and teacher’s lunches the days we host the learning pod in our basement (5 kids + teacher). 

The garage fridge also came with us, I only usually use it 6 months a year, it’s great for entertaining on the patio because it’s right there, right now it’s full of deer meat from the deer I harvested in the fall.  We also host a lot of the holidays, so we’ll plug in the garage fridge for those events.

And then my buddy had a dorm-sized wine fridge, he moved and had an extra large fridge in the basement so he said he’d give me the wine fridge (we drink a lot of wine) so one of these days I’ll go pick it up from him. Electricity here is cheap (rarely see a bill over $175 for a 4K sq ft house) so why not?  We don’t drink any soda (only keep a 6-pk of Diet Coke for when my mom visits), but my kids drink lemonade and my wife drinks that flavored sparkling water. I also keep a fair amount of beer on hand, we like beer from WI (New Glarus) that you can’t get in IL, so whenever we go up I bring back a few cases. Given I didn’t really pay for any of these fridges it seems a pretty harmless indulgence but I guess people have to bitch about something.

[SunnyDays]

I live by myself and have a side by side fridge/freezer and also an upright freezer in the basement.  It’s not strictly necessary, but the extra space allows me to keep stuff like flour, rice, pasta, crackers etc in either fridge or freezer, because one person doesn’t eat enough to be able to keep a variety of food on hand without having to shop every week.  I also freeze meat and veggies and soups, so it fills up surprisingly quickly.

[iris lily]

This reminds me that for my condo I would like to find a tiny freezer for the “beverage station “I’m installing. I want it to hold ice cubes. I did not install an ice cube maker in my refrigerator because 1) it takes up space and 2) parenthesis it is a disaster waiting to happen.

Did I read this right? Are you seriously considering buying a freezer just to hold ice cubes?

You know what else makes and holds ice cubes? An ice cube tray.

i inow crazy eh? I may not end up doing it, but I have my eye on a tiny unit that is a freezer, not a refrigerator. It would go in the beverage center right by the kitchen. My kitchen is tiny, the refrigerator is a small apartment size one, and so an extra unit for just ice cubes has utility.

[Telecaster]

Wait a minute, @RetiredAt63, I can chop my garlic and then freeze it in portion sizes??  Man, I love this forum.  Learning new things ALL the time.  Thank you!

I buy one of the peeled garlic packages from Sam's Club every few months. Put it in the blender with some olive oil. Then freeze it in quart bags flattened so you can break off chunks. It's less potent than fresh, but so much easier.

Great idea!  I'm going to start doing this. 

[GreenToTheCore]

Why isn’t an onion considered a vegetable by Americans? If it isn’t a vegetable, what it is?

So that they can complain when foreigners use too much of them and make.things smell like onion.

It is a condiment, I guess. After all, we do out some raw onion out for chili dogs...

We eat plenty of onions. Fiber! Antioxidants! Must be a veggie! We are a household of two and I buy onions at Costco. We went without for two weeks and I am think of roasting onion for dinner tonight now that we have them again.

Wait, when did onions get kicked off the vegetable list?

Some vegetables are only just hanging on as vegetables . . . onions have a better hold on the title than potatoes in my mind though.  :P

:> DH would add sweet potatoes to that list, too.

[ChickenStash]

I've tossed around the idea of getting a small chest freezer but haven't done it, yet. I just passed on picking up an old upright freezer - it was a monster that would probably double my electric bill. It's pretty common around here for the grocery stores to have major loss-leader sales for various holidays so being able to stock up would be beneficial. Plus, I like making stocks, soups, and sauces in bulk to freeze.

My normal fridge/freezer is a side-by-side which I am convinced is the stupidest arrangement possible. The freezer is quite narrow and hard to use efficiently. A small part of me hopes it craps out so I can justify looking for a better arrangement.

Growing up, we usually had an old fridge in the garage for soda, water, maybe a few beers. The beers were mainly for company as no one else in the house was really a beer drinker. It was nice to be able to grab a cold beverage without having to traipse through the house after getting dirty working outside all day. It also worked for storing overflow foods if we were having a lot of guests for some reason. I got ahold of a small dorm fridge that is probably going out in my garage this summer for drinks.

As an aside... I've lived in the the US my whole life (~40 years) and never heard anyone say an onion was not a vegetable. Where do people get this "Americans think..." stuff from is beyond me.

[JLee]

I've tossed around the idea of getting a small chest freezer but haven't done it, yet. I just passed on picking up an old upright freezer - it was a monster that would probably double my electric bill. It's pretty common around here for the grocery stores to have major loss-leader sales for various holidays so being able to stock up would be beneficial. Plus, I like making stocks, soups, and sauces in bulk to freeze.

My normal fridge/freezer is a side-by-side which I am convinced is the stupidest arrangement possible. The freezer is quite narrow and hard to use efficiently. A small part of me hopes it craps out so I can justify looking for a better arrangement.

Growing up, we usually had an old fridge in the garage for soda, water, maybe a few beers. The beers were mainly for company as no one else in the house was really a beer drinker. It was nice to be able to grab a cold beverage without having to traipse through the house after getting dirty working outside all day. It also worked for storing overflow foods if we were having a lot of guests for some reason. I got ahold of a small dorm fridge that is probably going out in my garage this summer for drinks.

As an aside... I've lived in the the US my whole life (~40 years) and never heard anyone say an onion was not a vegetable. Where do people get this "Americans think..." stuff from is beyond me.

I hate side by sides - the space allocation is terrible.  I replaced mine with a french door style fridge during a Best Buy black friday sale (and then found a scratch on it so I got another $200 off!) and have absolutely no regrets.

[NumberJohnny5]

I don't mind side-by-sides, IF I have a freezer that's wide enough to fit a frozen pizza in. I've come home a few times with a pizza that had to be cooked the same day, because it wouldn't fit (it would fit in the fridge portion, though).

We have a small chest freezer (5.5 cu ft, wanted a 7.0 or larger but couldn't pass on the deal). They tend to be pretty energy efficient. Keeps items colder than the side-by-side, plus it's not a frost-free version. The process that a freezer goes through to keep frost from forming contributes to freezer burn. A loaf of bread starts to taste a bit off after a month or so if it's in a frost-free freezer, but I haven't found a time limit yet for the chest freezer. Same for other foods. Even if we didn't need the extra space, the chest freezer is simply better for long-term storage. When the power was out for days and we couldn't get out to the grocery store due to the iced roads (and stores were out of essentials like milk and bread when we could get out), I just grabbed bread (and bologna) from the chest freezer and didn't worry about it. One can also freeze milk, but I keep a few weeks worth of shelf-stable box milk for just such an occasion.

[GuitarStv]

I don't mind side-by-sides, IF I have a freezer that's wide enough to fit a frozen pizza in. I've come home a few times with a pizza that had to be cooked the same day, because it wouldn't fit (it would fit in the fridge portion, though).

I've found that never eating frozen pizza fixes that problem entirely.  :P

[Imma]

I'm in a small house in the city (in Europe) so we don't have much space. We have a half-sized refrigerator with a separate half-sized freezer on top. We preferred this over buying one appliance with a larger fridge space and a much smaller freezer space. We use our freezer much more than our fridge and if we had the space, we'd definitely have a full-sized freezer. I used to live in a rental that included a full-sized freezer with 8 big drawers and I absolutely loved it. I'm very glad I didn't have to pay the power bill though. It was quite old so it was probably expensive to run.

I grew up in the countryside and we had several freezers at home too. A large chest freezer because we'd have a cow butchered once a year and we'd need to store it somewhere until we were going to eat it. And an old half-sized one that we kept in a seperate space, that we only used for the purpose of storing dead animals in until we were able to properly dispose of them (animals that weren't butchered but died of natural causes).

[Roadrunner53]

It is just the two of us. We have on normal refrigerator with upper freezer in the kitchen. We have another similar refrigerator in the basement. We have a very large 21 CF upright freezer in the basement and recently purchased another small 15 CF upright freezer during this pandemic. I shop the year round bargains. Turkeys and hams at Thanksgiving, prime rib roasts at Christmas, pot roasts, pork chops and chickens on sale during the year. Lots of frozen veggies. I have a garden and when my tomato harvest is large, I freeze tomatoes. I order meat from Butcher Box, Costco, a frozen food company. We rotate our food and we never throw out anything. We keep an eye on dates and when something is nearing expiration, we cook it. I vacuum pack a lot of things so they don't get freezer burn and they last longer than one year. Right now I am waiting for corned beef to go on sale and will buy maybe 3 of them and have them several months down the road. We have pizza's, bread, tortillias frozen. We buy bargain priced butter and freeze that. We have hot dogs, hamburgers, rolls frozen. I have various types of fish in the freezers. We had 10 lbs of King Crab in the freezer several months ago. The refrigerator down in the basement has cheese, yogurt, eggs. I buy 4 dozen eggs when I do curbside shopping. I usually do curbside every 4-6 weeks and stock up. Because of the pandemic, I rarely go to the grocery store. I also buy various types of deli meat and cheese then freeze it in small 1/2 lb packages. Works for us and we love it!

[ducky19]

We have our main fridge that came with the house in the kitchen. It's one of those bottom freezer French door jobs and was probably several thousand dollars new. We have a stand up freezer in the garage for meat (we usually buy a quarter cow and half hog at a time) and a "beer" fridge in the basement. About a year ago, the main board on the main fridge went out and it took a week to get the part in. We had to move everything to the "beer" fridge and it really sucked having to go up and down the stairs to get something out of the fridge, but now that I think about it I realize it was lucky we had it because otherwise we would have lost all of the food in the main fridge.

After reading this post, I decided to check the "beer" fridge to see what all was in it. There was a bottle of wine and half a case of beer. Yup, that sucker just got unplugged. I put a couple of the beers in the main fridge just in case, otherwise there's no need to have it sucking down the juice. Our electric company's website lets you see your usage by day, so I'm going to check back in a day or two and see what kind of a difference it makes. I'll report back soon!

[Hula Hoop]

My parents had ginormous chest freezer in the garage; the kind you could easily fit a side of beef into. It was from the '60s or '70s, and it was always full. Probably 80% of the stuff in it never got used; just slowly turned to permafrost in the bottom. We used to joke that if you dug deep enough, you'd find some nice Brontosaurus steaks down there!

Despite what most multiple fridge/freezer owners in this thread are saying I suspect that a lot of people have fridges/freezers like this, just contributing to the enormous amount of food we waste.

We only have one smallish fridge/freezer but I had a look in the freezer earlier today and found some frozen fish that has been there almost a year and some frozen stock that also really needs eating soon.  I imagine if we had a huge freezer, we'd end up with less incentive to use up the stuff in the freezer and we wouldn't run out of space so quickly.  Maybe if we bought half a cow at a time we'd use the freezer space but we're not huge meat eaters so that's unlikely.

[PMG]

I haven't made it through every post on this thread, but the beverage fridge??  Can't you just fit a couple on the door of the main fridge? and replace them as you use them? That convenience of grabbing one in the garage when you're coming in from mowing the yard or working on a project sounds really... convenient.  But oh my. hah!  I am just mystified by the demand for a beverage fridge. I thought coolers and ice were how you handle party demand!   

We had multiples growing up. We were poor and mom sale shopped and put up cheap market fruit and vegetables. I am not sure the math ever worked out, because there was also the cost of running them and the extra food that got lost and wasted, but it did allow her to stretch an uneven food budget so that we always had food even if it wasn't fun, or was a bit freezer burnt by the time we got to it.

My partner has brought up getting a chest freezer a couple times in the past year, as we've greatly increased the amount of food we keep on hand and eat more frozen vegetables now than we did pre-covid, but we've gotten pretty good at managing everything in the fridge top freezer. I would rather figure it out, do a little extra menu planning, than to add another appliance full of perishables to maintain.

[TMB]

2 people, large fridge/freezer in the kitchen and a small upright freezer downstairs.  We definitely could rotate food more but we've found a lot of value in the second freezer (bought 2nd hand from a friend who was moving) in getting good deals on various things such as turkeys that are priced seasonally.  Also, we garden and would make spaghetti sauce out of the tomatoes and freeze that along with making our own chorizo out of a large cut of pork from Costco.  Finally, where we live meal moths are a constant annoyance, so we keep a good amount of things that they like (flour, various seeds/dried peppers) in the freezer, especially since I don't tend to go through such products that quickly.

Definitely don't need the 2nd freezer, but financially likely not a bad decision given the moderate cost of operating the freezer (non frost-free type) versus the benefit of being able to stockpile on sales.  Throw in the personal value of having lots of frozen options and for us it is a win but we also aren't very mustachian, but I enjoy the site to at least encourage myself to be a bit more in that direction.

[enFuego]

A long history of multiple fridges here.  We live in a rural area for 15 years where the grocery stores were we shopped at were ~30 minutes away.  Three kids, shop the sales at three different stores, and 15 minutes to any store if you run out of milk.  We started with one fridge, then when we replaced that one we moved it into the basement.  Then eventually added a chest freezer for a several years.  Never ran out of food, but almost never threw anything away either.  (Even now throwing away a half gallon of milk is a traumatic experience.)  Several gallons of milk at a time, whole frozen turkeys for 19 cents a pound the week after Thanksgiving, lunch meat and chicken breast on sale, etc.  Even now with a dwindling population in the house we still have a second fridge in the basement and cook big batches of food and freeze the extra for another week.  The challenge when our youngest goes off to college next fall is to get DW to override the engrained impulse to keep filling the second fridge.  We probably can get rid of it at this point, but I'll take baby steps :).

[Roadrunner53]

A long history of multiple fridges here.  We live in a rural area for 15 years where the grocery stores were we shopped at were ~30 minutes away.  Three kids, shop the sales at three different stores, and 15 minutes to any store if you run out of milk.  We started with one fridge, then when we replaced that one we moved it into the basement.  Then eventually added a chest freezer for a several years.  Never ran out of food, but almost never threw anything away either.  (Even now throwing away a half gallon of milk is a traumatic experience.)  Several gallons of milk at a time, whole frozen turkeys for 19 cents a pound the week after Thanksgiving, lunch meat and chicken breast on sale, etc.  Even now with a dwindling population in the house we still have a second fridge in the basement and cook big batches of food and freeze the extra for another week.  The challenge when our youngest goes off to college next fall is to get DW to override the engrained impulse to keep filling the second fridge.  We probably can get rid of it at this point, but I'll take baby steps :).

I wouldn't be in a hurry to get rid of that second fridge. I keep my overflow in mine. I buy big bags of shredded cheese, blocks of cheese. We defrost our meat in our fridge, depending on size, for several days. We keep 4 dozen eggs down there. Some beer. Sometimes when I do curbside, we just put stuff temporarily in there till we decide if we want to bring it upstairs or freeze.

I am also that person that buys 4 turkeys at Thanksgiving for 39 cents a lb. I have them every few months. No waste because I make turkey soup or pot pies. Make my own broth from the bones and scraps. We don't use much milk so that isn't an issue but on a rare occassion something needs to be thrown out, it is tragic to me! I have more problem with shelf stable items watching for expiration dates.

To each his own on whether to have multiple freezers and refrigerators. As far as electricity goes, if you buy the energy efficeint models and don't open the door every 5 minutes, it shouldn't be that much of a burden on the electric bill. My two freezers are fairly new. Replaced one, two years ago, when the old one conked out. Then last fall got another smaller one. Both are frost free uprights.

With the pandemic, I do not want to expose myself to multiple trips to the grocery every week. I am very happy to fill my freezers up and rotate the inventory as needed and stay away from the stores as much as possible.

[Dicey]

@Roadrunner53, you make a good point about opening the door. I notice that the food in the garage fridge lasts a lot longer than what's inside. I agree that it's harder to keep up with the shelf stable goods. Just last night, I moved something and noticed a small can of Macadamia Nuts. Seems the expiration date was in 2017. I'm not going to toss them, but I have a feeling they may have gone off. Pity.

[dcheesi]

My parents had ginormous chest freezer in the garage; the kind you could easily fit a side of beef into. It was from the '60s or '70s, and it was always full. Probably 80% of the stuff in it never got used; just slowly turned to permafrost in the bottom. We used to joke that if you dug deep enough, you'd find some nice Brontosaurus steaks down there!

Despite what most multiple fridge/freezer owners in this thread are saying I suspect that a lot of people have fridges/freezers like this, just contributing to the enormous amount of food we waste.

We only have one smallish fridge/freezer but I had a look in the freezer earlier today and found some frozen fish that has been there almost a year and some frozen stock that also really needs eating soon.  I imagine if we had a huge freezer, we'd end up with less incentive to use up the stuff in the freezer and we wouldn't run out of space so quickly.  Maybe if we bought half a cow at a time we'd use the freezer space but we're not huge meat eaters so that's unlikely.

Yeah, I think chest freezers are especially bad for this; it's so easy to lose track of what's underneath the top layer, and digging down is a pain.

Combined with my parents' tendency to buy things on sale, whether they needed any or not, it led to things like half a dozen packs of chicken wings, in various states of partial consumption, all in different "layers" of the freezer...

[Imma]

My parents had ginormous chest freezer in the garage; the kind you could easily fit a side of beef into. It was from the '60s or '70s, and it was always full. Probably 80% of the stuff in it never got used; just slowly turned to permafrost in the bottom. We used to joke that if you dug deep enough, you'd find some nice Brontosaurus steaks down there!

Despite what most multiple fridge/freezer owners in this thread are saying I suspect that a lot of people have fridges/freezers like this, just contributing to the enormous amount of food we waste.

We only have one smallish fridge/freezer but I had a look in the freezer earlier today and found some frozen fish that has been there almost a year and some frozen stock that also really needs eating soon.  I imagine if we had a huge freezer, we'd end up with less incentive to use up the stuff in the freezer and we wouldn't run out of space so quickly.  Maybe if we bought half a cow at a time we'd use the freezer space but we're not huge meat eaters so that's unlikely.

Yeah, I think chest freezers are especially bad for this; it's so easy to lose track of what's underneath the top layer, and digging down is a pain.

Combined with my parents' tendency to buy things on sale, whether they needed any or not, it led to things like half a dozen packs of chicken wings, in various states of partial consumption, all in different "layers" of the freezer...

In my previous home where I had a big freezer with 8 drawers, it was easy to keep track of everything, because every drawer had a purpose: bread, frozen fruits (I'd buy fruit cheaply at the farmer's market at the end of the day and eat it during winter) meals that I had prepared ahead, etc. In my family we had a chest freezer that we used mainly for our own butchered meat, but when that was nearly gone and people started putting other things in it, it would become very messy sometimes. At least it had to be cleared out once every year when we'd send another animal to be butchered. If you don't have that yearly incentive I can imagine your freezer can become total chaos.

[Roadrunner53]

My Hub is in charge of the inventory. I call it our warehouse! He was never, ever organized and has gotten really great at it. We are retired so he has the time. He puts like things on shelves together so they are not scattered and misplaced. Here is another little trick I did for my newest little freezer. I am a maniac to make every inch count. I noticed that two shelves were somewhat high and there were notches where I could move my shelves up. I decided to buy two more shelves for the freezer. They are very narrow and we are able to put frozen pizza's, bacon on them. Anything fairly flat can fit. This is space that would have gone unused.

Before getting my little freezer, I considered getting a small chest freezer but decided on an upright one. Here is an organization idea I found on youtube you might find helpful if you have a chest freezer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbsVS5rbSM

Some people are really organized and have spread sheets, white boards, clip boards with the inventory written down and erased off when taken out of the freezer. I cannot bring myself to do any of that!

[cupcakery]

We have a fridge/freezer in the kitchen and another in the garage.  We also have a small chest freezer in the storage room.  All are full.  Once a week I clean out the kitchen fridge and refill it from the garage fridge.  Once a month I rotate freezer items.  I don't like food waste, so I'm pretty good about keeping it to a minimum.  The kitchen fridge is full of fruits, veggies, cheese, milk, condiments, leftovers, eggs, etc.  I keep extra butter and eggs, flour, sugar, some herbs, etc. in the downstairs fridge.  It is also helpful when we have large stockpots of leftovers, or when I'm chilling bread dough overnight, etc.  The freezers are full of bags of all sorts of homemade food.  I freeze bags of soup, casseroles, sauce, taco meat, pre-cooked beans, rice, etc, black bean patties, bacon, muffins, dinner rolls, cookies,etc.  I freeze ice cube sized portions of pesto and other condiments that I use infrequently.  We also have frozen fruit and veggies for smoothies and usually some sort of frozen pizza or something like that for the kids.  We currently have a whole turkey in the freezer.  We were given two for Thanksgiving from DH's work.  We ate one and made a ton of soup, but haven't made the other.  One weird thing I have in there now is a huge bag of of unpeeled ginger.  I was given it last summer and I periodically break off a piece to cook with.  At first I was stumped.  It was a lot of ginger.  Who knew you could freeze it?  I'll never go back to buying bits and pieces as needed after this.  I love having it on hand.

[JLee]

My parents had ginormous chest freezer in the garage; the kind you could easily fit a side of beef into. It was from the '60s or '70s, and it was always full. Probably 80% of the stuff in it never got used; just slowly turned to permafrost in the bottom. We used to joke that if you dug deep enough, you'd find some nice Brontosaurus steaks down there!

Despite what most multiple fridge/freezer owners in this thread are saying I suspect that a lot of people have fridges/freezers like this, just contributing to the enormous amount of food we waste.

We only have one smallish fridge/freezer but I had a look in the freezer earlier today and found some frozen fish that has been there almost a year and some frozen stock that also really needs eating soon.  I imagine if we had a huge freezer, we'd end up with less incentive to use up the stuff in the freezer and we wouldn't run out of space so quickly.  Maybe if we bought half a cow at a time we'd use the freezer space but we're not huge meat eaters so that's unlikely.

Yeah, I think chest freezers are especially bad for this; it's so easy to lose track of what's underneath the top layer, and digging down is a pain.

Combined with my parents' tendency to buy things on sale, whether they needed any or not, it led to things like half a dozen packs of chicken wings, in various states of partial consumption, all in different "layers" of the freezer...

We use doubled-up plastic grocery bags to store food in our chest freezer, with items grouped by bag. It makes getting to the bottom feasible, just remove a few bags from the top layer.

[Nick_Miller]

Hell, our family proudly owns 2 fridges and a box freezer. I don't really understand how people would slam others for this (very minor) indulgence.

Fridge #1 is old. We stuck it in the garage and it serves to keep drinks cold and also the freezer space is handy for frozen pizzas. (I sort of assumed most people had one of these)

Fridge #2 replaced Fridge #1 and is moderately nice but not huge (maybe 20 cubic feet) and it stays full. This is where all our veggies, yogurts, cheese, turkey/beef, milk, etc. goes.

Box Freezer is usually 2/3 full. Right now, it has some frozen leftovers (like chili) which will be a meal down the line, huge bags of frozen broccoli, and various breakfast items like Eggos and breakfast sandwiches.

We waste very little and always keep fresh veggies, dairy and meats in stock. As a result, we eat out no more than once per week. Again, I don't really see how this is a big deal. Or a deal at all.

[Cranky]

I am currently looking around for a basement fridge for our new house, so was pleased to find that it’s a whole lifestyle! ;-)

We have a regular freezer on the bottom fridge, which gives you less refrigerator space than the classic freezer on the top layout, and we bought the seller’s practically new upright freezer in the basement.

But we’re a household of 5 adults and a preschooler, and sorry - we need more fridge space. I want to buy multiple gallons of milk at a time.

[BlueHouse]

My experience has been that for a lot of people, the second refrigerator is primarily used to keep beverages cold.

I could see that being really great for a party - a "beer fridge".  I guess these people entertain a lot?  Or drink rivers of soda?

I suspect it's more the latter.  The thing about beverages is that they stay "good" for a long time as long as you don't open them.  Don't forget fruit juice and Vitamin Water, Gatorade, etc.  Boxed wine, beer, wine coolers, water....there are so many different drinks one can chill.

EVERY PERSON I know that lives in the suburbs near me has at least two refrigerators.  The second (or third) is kept in the garage or the basement and is mostly filled with beverages.  The reason as far as I can tell, is that the "mom" doesn't want people (kids and their friends or spouse and their friends) trudging into the clean kitchen every time they want another brewski.  My theory is that if they have a bathroom nearby, they may as well put a fridge there. 

But I don't think most of these families actually buy a second or third fridge.  I think when renovating, they upgrade a refrigerator and then don't want to get rid of the old one.  Or they'll take a neighbor's. 

I absolutely refused to put a second one in my place (even though the rooftop hangout is 2 floors away from the refrigerator).  If I need to, I fill a bag with ice and throw a few cold ones in there, but there's always someone willing to walk the two flights and bring up another round. 

[Roadrunner53]

I don't see why anyone has a problem with others having multiple refrigerators and freezers. We all do what fits our lifestyle. If you like it do it, if you don't like it, then don't do it.

I personally could not deal, even if we didn't have a pandemic going on, shopping every other day. That would drive me nuts. We stock up and are done for weeks at a time. We have many food choices, vegetables, other side dishes.

We rarely eat out or have food delivered. Twice a year maybe. We like cooking and experimenting with recipes. Eating out is very expensive.

[Imma]

I don't see why anyone has a problem with others having multiple refrigerators and freezers. We all do what fits our lifestyle. If you like it do it, if you don't like it, then don't do it.

I personally could not deal, even if we didn't have a pandemic going on, shopping every other day. That would drive me nuts. We stock up and are done for weeks at a time. We have many food choices, vegetables, other side dishes.

We rarely eat out or have food delivered. Twice a year maybe. We like cooking and experimenting with recipes. Eating out is very expensive.

I couldn't care less how many fridges/freezers other people have. That's totally your choice to make :)

But we are mustachians, and we all know that fridges and freezers, especially the older models, eat loads and loads of electricity, they are generally the most energy slurping appliances in the home. So I do believe that many people would save a ton of money if they'd get rid of them.

And especially for small families I just don't really understand what people do with all the space, especially the fridge space. Everything in the fridge is perishable. We are two adults with a table model fridge. We get groceries maybe once every 2 weeks and then it's full, we go shopping when it's empty again. I guess I could get more food at the same time, but it would probably be perished anyway before I got around to eating. At least frozen food won't perish.

I know a few couples with massive fridges and they are usually filled with beer bottles or cans of soda. I wouldn't want to spend all that money on first buying a very expensive appliance and then paying for all that power, just to keep an entire crate of beer cool at the same time. I mean, unless you're consuming 24 bottles of beer a day (in which case you have a bigger issue than the electricity bill) it makes no sense. You can just store the beer or the soda in the basement/pantry/cupboard and put a few in the fridge when you're planning to drink them. If I had electricity in the shed, I'd keep an old fridge there but I'd only plug it in when I was hosting a party or BBQ.

[GuitarStv]

Beer is surprisingly perishable.  If you're keeping beer at room temperatures for a couple weeks, the taste of it will noticeably change for the worse.  You can cool down skunky beer, but you can't make it taste good again.  This matters a lot more if you're like me and enjoy a beer every week or two  . . . so end up storing the beer for longer than normal.

Soda can be boiling temperatures with no problems though.

[Alternatepriorities]

Seems pretty normal to have a chest freezer to me.

Where I grew up in Northern Ontario, not many families had a lot of money.  One way that they cut bills was to hunt for moose in the fall, and then eat that moose over the rest of the year . . . which required a good sized amount of freezer space.

It's nice to know there are others here who consider "enough space to preserve a moose" as a reasonable amount of freezer space.

Aside from the regular freezer, we have two smaller chest freezers rather than a single large one. We'll loose half our food if one goes out... I keep them in garage which is already a pretty stable refrigerator for most of the year. At the peak last fall we had 1/2 a moose, 1/2 a caribou, some sheep, some black bear, some beef, about 30 salmon, a couple chickens, a little halibut, plus three kinds of berries, and 5 gallons of frozen stock in them...

[Cranky]

I don't see why anyone has a problem with others having multiple refrigerators and freezers. We all do what fits our lifestyle. If you like it do it, if you don't like it, then don't do it.

I personally could not deal, even if we didn't have a pandemic going on, shopping every other day. That would drive me nuts. We stock up and are done for weeks at a time. We have many food choices, vegetables, other side dishes.

We rarely eat out or have food delivered. Twice a year maybe. We like cooking and experimenting with recipes. Eating out is very expensive.

I couldn't care less how many fridges/freezers other people have. That's totally your choice to make :)

But we are mustachians, and we all know that fridges and freezers, especially the older models, eat loads and loads of electricity, they are generally the most energy slurping appliances in the home. So I do believe that many people would save a ton of money if they'd get rid of them.

And especially for small families I just don't really understand what people do with all the space, especially the fridge space. Everything in the fridge is perishable. We are two adults with a table model fridge. We get groceries maybe once every 2 weeks and then it's full, we go shopping when it's empty again. I guess I could get more food at the same time, but it would probably be perished anyway before I got around to eating. At least frozen food won't perish.

I know a few couples with massive fridges and they are usually filled with beer bottles or cans of soda. I wouldn't want to spend all that money on first buying a very expensive appliance and then paying for all that power, just to keep an entire crate of beer cool at the same time. I mean, unless you're consuming 24 bottles of beer a day (in which case you have a bigger issue than the electricity bill) it makes no sense. You can just store the beer or the soda in the basement/pantry/cupboard and put a few in the fridge when you're planning to drink them. If I had electricity in the shed, I'd keep an old fridge there but I'd only plug it in when I was hosting a party or BBQ.

I don’t think it costs all that much to run a refrigerator. I pay $89/month for electric and about half of that is the basic fee that is the same no matter how much I use. Most of my annual usage is running the a/c in the summer. I bet my fridge costs less than $10/month.

[TysonGA]

Why is this in the wall of shame?  Most people have second refrigerators to save money.  I wouldn't say everyone has a second fridge or freezer but most people certainly do.  If anyone lives outside the city, they aren't going to burn gas driving into town 2-3x a week just to pick up groceries.

If you take a deer or buy a side of beef, what would be the mustachian thing to do with the meat if not store it and cook meals at home?  A lot of cuts of meat are very expensive but go on sale a couple times a year.  We'll normally take home a few whole briskets and freeze them when it's $.95/lb instead of just buying it for $8 on July 3rd..

Maybe it's a regional thing having grown up in the midwest and lived mostly as an adult in the south.  In most areas, a second fridge is a normal accessory for frugal living.

Edit: I see beverage storage mentioned above as well.  Great point!  I probably wouldn't have a 2nd fridge just for beverages alone but we do visit craft breweries and wineries several times a year.  If there is something special we want to take home and save, it usually goes back in the other fridge until whoever it is we wanted to share the bottle with comes by.

[windytrail]

Beer is surprisingly perishable.  If you're keeping beer at room temperatures for a couple weeks, the taste of it will noticeably change for the worse.  You can cool down skunky beer, but you can't make it taste good again.  This matters a lot more if you're like me and enjoy a beer every week or two  . . . so end up storing the beer for longer than normal.

Not true with a home-brewed ale, which will improve in flavor for several weeks or longer at room temperature after bottling. My IPAs taste the best about 5 weeks after bottling at room temperature, following 2 weeks of primary fermentation at room temperature.  Pop a couple in the refrigerator several hours before drinking, no extra beer fridge necessary.

According to DirectEnergy, refrigerators from the 1980s cost about $200 per year in electricity on average, while newer refrigerators use only $35 of electricity. (https://www.directenergy.com/learning-center/how-much-electricity-does-my-refrigerator-use). If there are 50 million households still running these old refrigerators, that's $8.25 billion in excess energy costs per year. Not a trivial amount.