Is an extra freezer worth the expense?

[Fairacre]

For my household, I don't think an extra freezer would be worth the expense it would require in initial purchase price and the electricity needed to keep it running. In addition to the real possibility each summer of having the power knocked out by a hurricane for days/weeks, and then having to find other ways to keep the freezer cold or having much of the stored food spoil.

I haven't done the math on it, but I am doubtful that it would be worth it for me to stock up on food when it's on sale only to spend $$$ for the appliance & its electricity to store it. Even the chickens I raise for meat aren't that economical $$-wise, I'd hate to add to their cost by storing them in a separate freezer. Instead, I raise them in small numbers so I don't have so many to process & store at one time, and I usually simmer them and de-bone them so I only need store their meat, which fits nicely in my regular refrigerator.

Perhaps it would be worth it if I had sides of beef or hunted large animals like deer or elk and needed to preserve them all at once. And used it only during the hurricane off-season.

What do you think? How have you made your freezer work for your household?

 

[Alaska Animal Lover]

I love our freezer! As you said though, we use it for moose meat and fish, as well as sale items. If you are worried about the inital cost you could try to find a used one. Craigslist or your local paper. I believe the chest freezers are more economical and if there were a power outage they take longer to defrost(as long as you keep the lid shut) In a way they are just a big cooler and if there was room you could freeze jugs of water to store in it, which would keep it from thawing out as fast in an emergency. Plus if need be you could use the water for drinking.

Good luck!

 

[pioneergirl]

I had to chuckle at this post, and not at you Fairacre, but at the thought of the freezer...let me explain.

DH is all about getting one. He wants one you can fit half the grocery store in!! We already have 2 refrigerators (with the freezer part) and he wants a bigger one. "But we have all those veggies, that meat from the chickens, half the hog...." I think somewhere deep down he is preparing for the war of worlds and we need to stockpile

Anyway, I guess it depends on what you are doing, or how you live. The way I look at it is this....if you grow/raise your own food during the nice months, and preserve it or freeze it (spending the initial cost for set up and your time to do all this) then you won't have to worry come the winter months. You won't really have to spend that money at the grocery, you know where the food came from, and you can even fix things in a pinch without saying "I can't fix that, I'm out of ....." I guess thats the way we do it. Minus the essentials or things I can't make myself, I would have no reason to go to the store all winter, so maybe that balances out the cost. At least thats how I reason it out in my lil ol brain!! LOL

 

[miss_thenorth]

Funny this should come up now--I just bought two new freezers yesterday. I bought two-- 5 cubic foot freezers. I needed the freezer space of 10cuft, and The Bargain Annex of a local furniture store had 5cuft scratch and dents. So I got two, with the thought that I could unplug one when it got empty. Add these to my existing 7 1/2 cuft freezer that is too full right now.

The kwh for one 5 cuft freezer is 248 kwh/year. That's about $13 /year. I also keep my freezers in my garage, so it really hardly runs at all during the winter, thus saving even more money.

We very rarely lose power, and if it does go out, it is usually only for about an hour, so that is not an issue for us.

I definitely think freezers are worth it. I freeze alot of my produce, I have my meat chickens, am getting a side of beef (pastured and local--), and quite possibly a pig.

 

[nccountrygirl]

We just bought another freezer about 3 weeks ago, I ran out of room in my big upright so we bought a smaller upright to keep meat in. I think it was a wise investment for us.

 

[heatherv]

We bought ours about 5 or 6 yrs ago, and I've never regretted it. I had the same concerns as you.

How it has helped me, may be different than for you though. We have 5 children, and I do bulk cooking to save time. I portion out meals, and freeze. When we were both working full time (plus) this made meals much more convenient (and easy for non cooking DH to heat up) so we were spending less on fast food, and meals out. If we're in meetings/appts etc. all day, then have after school activities for kids (or us) then a half or to grab something to eat b4 another activity.. it's crazy! But having a precooked meal that can be prepared in a few minutes saves us money. (all the craziness doesn't apply this year though, thank goodness)

I also use our freezer to stock up on sale items. I do keep jugs of water in there, when it's not full, to help it run better, and in case of power outage.

 

[patandchickens]

If there's a decent chance of losing power for more than a couple of days in a typical year, then indeed freezing may not be such a good way of storing your food (canning would start to look more appealing).

For people for whom that's unlikely to happen, though, it's a pretty good way of storing things, especially homegrown stuff. The best part is that it takes a lot less work to prepare food for the freezer than to can it. The electricity to run a chest freezer is negligable (I expect ours, which IIRC is 13 cu ft, will run like $30-50 per year) so the cost is really onlly the purchase price. And you can often get one secondhand to cut down on that. (Be aware that older models are not as energy efficient, though). I suppose that in a hot climate, like wherever you are that hurricanes are an issue , it may cost more to run than up here where many people (not us, alas) can put their freezer in an unheated garage and have it use basically NO electricity for about a third of the year.

One potential drawback of freezers is that I know a bunch of people who get sucked into buying lots of store-boughten stuff they wouldn't otherwise eat, just because it's on 1/2 price sale and they have room in the freezer. I'm not talking about frozen peas, I'm talking about things like frozen pizza, that it would probably be better not to be eating any more of it than you can avoid. I will confess that the first thing to go into mine was 4 quarts of Breyer's mint chocolate chip ice cream on 1/2 price sale. So sue me, I grew up with the stuff and just gotta have it sometimes

JMHO,

Pat

 

[BrookValley]

I will confess that the first thing to go into mine was 4 quarts of Breyer's mint chocolate chip ice cream on 1/2 price sale. So sue me, I grew up with the stuff and just gotta have it sometimes

JMHO,

Pat

My chest freezer has a few quarts of Breyer's chillin' in it right now. Yeah, they were $1.99 at the grocery store. I couldn't help it. And really, I think that there's a lot worse you could do in terms of junk food than Breyer's...or maybe that's just my half-hearted justification for stocking up on it when it's on sale!

Our freezer has been great. It's a fairly recent model and we got it for $25 from a relative who was moving and didn't want to move it with them. It's not very large and it fits in the closet in our downstairs extra bedroom/office/study. Not sure of the cu. ft. But I stock up on sale frozen veggies, etc. I also have acquired several half-gallons of just expired organic milk from the health food store I work at--those went in the deep freeze, too! I won't have to buy milk for months! Other out-of-date food often ends up in the freezer, too.

For us the freezer has been good. But I wouldn't like to depend on it for a long-term self-sufficiency plan (my personal plan is to learn to live without as much electric-powered "things" as possible). We don't usually have power outages for more than a day, but it can happen. Hurricane Isabelle knocked out power to many parts of the area for 2 weeks or more. I remember not having power for 2 weeks during a very nasty ice storm as a teenager. So, these things are somewhat rare, but not outside the realm of possibility.

 

[Nuggetsowner:)]

We love our freezers. We have two fridges with freezers obviously and a larger chest freezer. It seems the fridge freezers stay full most of the time and our chest freezer is probably at its emptiest right now, but in two week we will have a whole hog to put in there ( it is at the market now being processed) and then in Nov/Dec we usually get beef. With a family of 5 we need all the space we can get. I do freeze alot of the produce we grow in our garden and I stock up at the store if there are good sales. We hunt and that meat ends up in the freezer too. I think we would be running to the store much more often if we didn't have the freezers and would not be able to put away alot of what we do. Or I would have to do more canning of veggies, fruits and meats but then you have to look at that cost and time as well. So in the end I definately feel the freezers were a good purchase for my family and if I took the time to cost out all the savings/costs, I am sure it would prove how much of a money saver they are too!!

 

[FarmerChick]

I have 4 refrigerators and 2 chest freezers.
We farm and eggs and pork sausage and meat take up the rest.

The house refrig. never is used for the farm. My pet peeve..LOL

Depends, do you really need it? Are you so stocked up ahead for your family.....that getting another adds cost but not true functionality?

Eat what is in your current freezer. I have a tendency to "over freeze" --LOL--and I must take a few months to "eat out of the freezer" before it goes bad.

More freezer doesn't mean more security...it means more cost and possibly more waste with outages.

So "USE" the freezer you have. Eat out of it and restock....just don't stock and run out of space..LOL--that happened to me big time..HA HA

I wanted to buy another freezer, a chest type, why??, cause I could, but also I thought I needed more freezer space, then I realized...WHY?.....it won't save me more to constantly freeze and not use.

So just something to think about.
Would you truly use it and do you truly need it? Are you using the current one as effective as you can...like eating out of it....and is it soooooo old that new is better efficiency wise, where, unplug the old one and use it as a storage unit or feed holder (mouse proof) and just buy a newer big one?

let us know what you decide.....