Thinking of getting a freezer

[NW-Bound]

My wife does write the date sometimes, although I can guess the age by looking at the freezer burn mark.

Nope. She minds her business, and I mine. Each is the master of his/her own separate domain.

[East Texas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by modhatter Well. Some very diverse opinions. Now I'm really confused! Anyone have both a chest type and a stand up want to offer an opinion of which one you prefer and use most? I know it's energy costs versus convenience I guess.

We have a chest and an upright. The smaller chest is a manual defrost and I swear there should be OSHA requirements on short people (height-challenged people) and chest freezers. Food items stored in a chest freezer are not as easy to access as an upright. We use the chest freezer to store a side of beef and we freeze wheat berries for a week when we first get them (Grannie always said to do that to kill the weevils). The chest freezer is in the garage.

We bought the self-defrosting Frigidaire 20.5cf upright in spring of 2010 and keep it in a storage area in the house. There were several reasons we bought this particular model. We live out in the country and have frequent power outages. We have a residential generator that comes on about 20 seconds after the co-op power is off so we had to have a freezer that could run on "dirty power". If there was some strange reason the generator didn't come on, this model had a display that would tell us how long the electricity was off and the highest the temperature inside the freezer got during the outage.

We use the upright freezer to store food items we don't can or dehydrate, such as corn-on-the cob or other items from the garden. We keep the frozen chicken in the upright. I freeze several months of both stick and tub butter along with items from the freezer section of the store. Like Rustic, we live in the country and only go to the store about once a month.

The upright is much easier to see food items since it has an inside light, glass shelves, multiple types of door storage, and everything stored in it is within easy grasp.

Several of you mentioned you have lots of grocery stores in your immediate area. Those of us who live in the country don't have, nor want, that kind of immediate luxury. Dining out means an hour drive to a decent size city with a good selection of restaurants. We choose to stay at the ranch and cook our own meals - plus it's significantly cheaper to cook at home than to eat out.

Bottom line - I prefer the upright simply because of convenience. The items in the upright are easy to see and easy to retrieve and it's a self-defrost.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by East Texas Several of you mentioned you have lots of grocery stores in your immediate area. Those of us who live in the country don't have, nor want, that kind of immediate luxury.

We city dwellers are just self-mocking for being hoarders.

[East Texas]

LOL....I'm not begrudging any of you for being city dwellers. Been there. Done that.

We use to live in the mega city when we worked for the mega companies. We had several mega grocery stores within a few miles of the house. And no freezer because, heck, the stores were huge and had everything we did or did not want and were open 24 hours a day. There was simply no incentive to buy in bulk or to think ahead more than a couple of days.

While we enjoyed (and paid for) the conveniences of the city, we appreciate the simple life of retirement out in the country away from anything "mega". Now we have a large garden, two full freezers, a store room full of canned and dehydrated food, and we go to the store only when we have to get something we really really need. And then we try to wait until we have several "really really need" on the list.

The reality of it is we can stay at the ranch and easily get by for several months without needing to venture into a grocery store. So when things happen (hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, haz-mat, stupid stuff) - and they do happen - we're not in the FEMA line.