We finally saved up enough money to buy a second freezer and I am so excited about it!! Since it’s Frugal Friday, I thought I’d share the money saving benefits of having an extra freezer, why we chose a chest freezer, and how to keep the darn thing organized!
Having a second freezer saves us SO much money! It allows me to really stock up when our favorite foods go on sale. It also allows me to cook more from scratch and then freeze the leftovers. That way, when I’m feeling lazy, I can heat up leftovers instead of calling my husband and telling him to pick up fast food on the way home. (Did I mention having a spare freezer can help you to eat healthier too?) I told my husband,
“Now that we have a second freezer, I can make extra cookies, muffins, breakfast sandwiches and tons of other stuff!” His reply was…
“If that’s the case, we should buy a third freezer!” (LOL)
We chose a chest freezer for 2 reasons.
- You get more square footage for your money
- In a power outage, a chest freezer will keep your food frozen FAR longer than an upright! (up to 3 days!)
The downfall to having a chest freezer, as most people know, is keeping it organized. If you just throw food into it without any thought of organizing anything, it’s like throwing your frozen food into the abyss of no return. By the time you find that food again, it may be so freezer burned and unrecognizable you will have no choice but to throw it out. Then you are WASTING money, not SAVING!
We have had our freezer for 2 months and so far the way we have it organized has worked very well and we have had no problems whatsoever getting to all of our food. Here are the 5 ways to organize a chest freezer!
1. Find boxes, crates, or reusable shopping bags that will work with the particular size of freezer you have. I was going to buy these awesome milk crates because I heard great reviews about using them in chest freezers. However, my daughter talked me out of it and suggested we just use leftover carboard boxes and see if we like those first. After all, they were FREE! We chose to use leftover diaper boxes. So far they are holding up well and they haven’t shown any signs of ever sticking to the sides of the freezer. Reusable shopping backs work awesome too because you can lift them up and move them around easily. We had some of those in our freezer to start with but had to pull them out to use them on our recent vacation. 🙂
Bottom Layer: Chicken, costco vegetables, Pork, Bread
2. Organize by different food groups. Your food will be so much easier to find if you know where to find it. I put my frozen veggies in one box, frozen chicken in another, along with dairy, et. If your freezer comes with sliding baskets in the top, keep the foods you use most often in those, or smaller items that could get lost easier.
Top Layer: Slider baskets with foods I need access to faster, Dairy, smaller frozen vegetables. (All of my fruits and convenience foods are in my other freezer) As you can see I still have lots of room for more!
3. Label foods with expiration dates. You might also want to label them with the contents if you are freezing your own leftovers or baked goods. YOU might know what’s in that ziploc had, but the rest of your family might not! I keep a sharpie in the cupboard close to my freezer bags.
4. Rotate! Check the contents of your freezer before you shop for more food and plan your meals around what you have first. Labeling also helps with the rotation process.
Love those slider baskets!!
5. Keep a mini windshield scraper in your freezer to maintain the frost that builds on the sides. If you do a quick scrape on the sides of your freezer at least once a month, you won’t ever have to do the big ‘DEFROST’ that is such a pain!
There! Now do you feel better about using a chest freezer? You can do this! Feel free to comment below if you have more awesome tips!
