My beautiful 15 cubic foot freezer. My heart sings a little each time I think of her. She sits in my basement, spacious and empty, just waiting to be filled. I have big plans for her. Seriously, I think she need a name, a sturdy name like Martha or Bertha. I have wanted a chest freezer for a long time and my husband and I finally decided to use a little money we'd set aside to purchase one. We did some research and really thought it over. A chest freezer may not make sense for everyone, but it does for us. Here are the deciding factors:
-I make most of our food from scratch. This means that I don't have a lot of convenience foods sitting on the shelves. It will be nice to have a place to store extra batches of soup and loaves of bread. Being able to make larger batches of food will allow me to save time and money.
-We have a decent-sized garden. Although I aspire to learn to can (and I hope to this summer with the help of my friend Kelly and her grammy), I don't yet. The freezer will allow us to save some of the harvest and have cheap, fresh produce throughout the year.
-Energy Star appliances make powering a chest freezer affordable. Our 15 cubic feet freezer will cost us a whopping $37 a year to run.
-The freezer in our kitchen will be much more organized and useful. I was cramming a lot of stuff into it and it was hard to keep organized.
I also gave a lot of thought to how I'd organize my new freezer. Chest freezers can become abysses and be a vehicle for wasting rather than saving money. I don't want to put food in and find it years later, too old to be eaten. So, I have a plan. Heather, who blogs at Want What You Have is my thriftiness guru and I get lots of ideas from her. I borrowed heavily from her freezer organization system in planning my own. Here's what I plan to do:
I'll use the four sliding baskets that came with the freezer, plus add two more milk crates to the bottom. This will allow me to simply remove one basket and then slide everything else around to reach what I need.
Each basket will store a designated type of food. So far, I plan to divide the baskets into the following categories:
Fruits and Veggies (purchased and from our garden)
Meat (we use very little, but storing it is a must since I'm the only one who eats it)
Prepared Food Purchased (the occasional frozen pizza, pierogies, veggie burgers and the like)
Prepared Food Homemade (soups, casseroles, etc. anything that just needs to be defrosted and heated)
Breads (for DH's lunch and treats like muffins and banana bread for us and to take to others)
Dairy (cheese, that's pretty much it, cheese. Oh, ice cream, I can't forget ice cream)
Beans (soaked, cooked and ready to use. cheaper and healthier than canned)
That's the grand plan. I can't wait to get started!
Kate
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