First let me say that owning a freezer is awesome and some thing that far to many of us take for granted.
There are all kinds of freezer owners..
Freeze with the fridge owners.. this freezer used to be quite small but honestly now that you have side by sides or fridges that are now 3 to 4 times the size they used to be.. they can have freezers that can hold the same amount as a small apartment size chest.
These kind of folks tend to have them STUFFED full and they ask me things like.. how much cubic space does half a lamb need 🙂
The next you have the apartment freezers.. they tend to be the size of a good bar fridge, many a little bigger and chest freezers.. if you are living frugal and carefully.. this is most likely the freezer that I would recommend everyone try’s for..
Its got enough room in it that with careful packing you can get your meat sale cycles, some frozen veggies, room for all kinds of small scrapes to be stores for making soup stock or if you are making double portions, freezing the second half for later cooking and or reheating.
All while having the least costly output, still fitting in your smart or smaller car and costing very little indeed on your power bills if you have a new energy smart.. plus they go on sale at all the bigger stores at least twice a year.. They will give you flex.. and we need flex more then ever if we want to buy frugally in these every raising prices.
Next.. the family sized freezers.. if you have more then two people, if you garden, if you buy half a pig and a quarter of beef from the butcher to save more money.. then you are going to need to step it up and get a bigger freezer..
These can range from 3 to 5 times the size volume wise from the apartment freezer.. the average family size tends to end up in the basement.. the big family size tends to end up in the garage..
If you can have it end up in the basement.. the heat in winter will add to your room when the motor runs and the cool of the basement in summer will keep it from running more often.
These ones are little more hmmm..
One.. they can cost a good amount to buy new and if you get a old one.. it will last forever but it will suck back the power like its going out of style.. there is reason so many folks upgrade and offer the big old ones for free.. just haul it away.. ya and pay and pay on the power bills.
Two: watch out for food getting lost.. the bigger the freezer.. the more the odds are that you are going to have to stay on top of things or.. you will be eating from the top and wasting food in the bottom parts.. Nothing worse then finding two or three year old truly freezer burned (as in your money is burned away!) food..
They do not keep stats on it, but I think that wasted food out of freezers on a yearly base while not as high as wasted fresh food is still up there..
Then comes folks like myself.. a blend of newer, older, chest, and upright.. farmers, gardeners, meat producers and so forth.. we own a number of them.. do you sell farm gate meats? Needs its own freezer and its own placement ideally.
Do not even think about storing it in the same freezer as your own home grown/home processed meat freezer..
Got large crops coming in and have to time to process.. tomato’s, and so much more.. put it in the freezer till the heat comes down.. till the more time is there.. We turn our freezers on and off as required..
I currently have one large upright freezer, its a meat freezer overall.. and I have one large chest freezer.. its a meat freezer and then its a catch all freezer as the needs flex and flow..
Then I have two med freezers.. one fruit, one veggie
Its the first day of summer today!
Somehow its fitting that we are doing a stock count.. we turned on one of the smaller freezer and we have emptied the bigger chest and the upright and turned them off to thaw out and get cleaned out.
I have to admit that I only do this once a year.. maybe others do it more.. but I do it when my food counts are at their lowest.. this is spring.. when we are using up the last of the fruits and veggies before the new harvests come in.. when we eating up the older meats or canning them up to make way for the summer and fall butcher times.
I would do it more if it was really needed but I know a friend who does it 4x a year and I just do not do it that often.. What about you? how often do you go though your freezers, that is in general about once a month for me.. and a big sort about every couple months but take it all out.. turn it off and clean it.. ya.. once a year!
How many freezers do you have? What is your favorite way to use them to be frugal?
Just another Day on the Farm 
For the two of us, we have a side by side, new, fridge freezer in the house. This is the least organized and the most diverse. Lots of small bits of herbs, yeast, packs of fruit that we started on, hash browns, homemade ready meals. I clean it whenever it does an avalanche on me when I am retrieving something. 2 more freezers in the garage. One, smaller, for the dog’s food. He eats raw and we buy in bulk, but it stinks, no matter how well you wrap it, the smell gets into other foods, so it has its own freezer. We also keep things we wont compost but that will rot, whilst they wait for the garbage truck day ( shrimp shells, meat bones). The larger one, is newer, bought second hand. This one holds meat, fruit, bread. I just cleaned/tidied it this week. I found 3 pieces of fish, given to us by fishing neighbors, that need eating, that I didn’t know were in there. Glad I found that premium protein before it spoiled! It gets pretty full by the end of the summer, with fruit and produce ( hopefully), then thins out to about now, which is when I tend to go through and tidy it up. On a misssion to eat up the frozen fruit at the moment.
glad you found the fish, that is good eating for sure and I am working on my fruits as well.. interesting about the dog food one.. i do the same on keeping things that would smell and invite breaking into the garbage bags frozen as well till the last bit before they go out on garbage day.
Once a year for me, but every second year I do a really deep clean where I take everything out and see what I have, and more importantly what I need.
Of the two big freezers, I keep one for meat, but I like to keep the other one for produce, homemade soups, and dairy products.
Do you freeze milk as well?
hi maria, yes i freeze butter, some milk to get over the dry spell and I keep colostrum frozen on hand during lambing season..
Two large uprights (one for beef, one for pork), one smallish chest for cheese and butter, one medium chest for chicken and veggies, one medium chest for overflow after butchering (bones, fat, etc until I can deal with it) that also gets used to freeze frames of honey to feed back to the bees in spring. My house fridge is a straight fridge (no freezer). Need room for all the milk jars (6 gallons a day coming in the house right now). All have been upgraded to energuide- very low cost to run. I do have an older outside straight fridge for milk overflow – it’s unplugged when not in use. The freezers get cleaned once a year – before they get ‘refilled’. The overflow chest freezer is in my bee bunker – cheese and butter gets transferred out there from the house as stock piles up. I would like to have fewer freezers – but that’s the least I can run with.
Great overview, Its amazing how many we need when we are the ones “storing” a year to year butcher dates.. I try and move them in downsizing as able to reduce the amount being used but there is a certain pleasure in turning them on as well.. as it means you are having a good harvest as well. I like the bee bunker with the frames.. what a pretty picture in my mind on that one 🙂
I have had folks be very surprised at the amount I use but really.. it takes space to hold the food.. and while canning is awesome.. sometimes you really do want “fresh” meat for certain dishes that ‘s for sure.
We have a fridge freezer, so the bottom half is the freezer bit. We do use it a lot, anything that we won’t be able to eat goes in there, batch cooking, bones from chicken we have made goes in until I have enough to make a stock with it.
I muss having a deep stand alone chest freezer though as I am sure we would find enough bargains to use it.
I have a very good idea of what’s in the freezer, due to it being so small. I turn it off and defrost and clean the fridge freezer once a year.
My sister and her husband have several freezers, they also had a freezer room in the basement. but the motor broke for this and as it was so old, it was quite costly to repair. So they decided to just use it as storage instead, as it has ample amounts of shelf space.
If anyone could find enough bargins to fill it, I know it would be you Silver for sure.. I can understand your sister and family having a number of them from what you told me.. very cool that they had a freezer room sorry that it broke but yes for sure I can see it being a amazing storage room. I would love a cold room in my basement, somewhere I could hang and age meat in.
D > We have nine freezers, two chest freezers the rest of the under-counter type, but a wide variety of sizes, and spread across a number of buildings (there’s only a small freezer actually in our own house). Each offers some special advantage, but equally each has its own quirkiness. Some are definitely more expensive to run than others : they’re the first to be emptied, last to be filled, and if possible empty over summer. We have a couple of trusty in/out now/max/min digital thermometers that are rotated round every few days so as to check they are all working fine. Where would we be without freezers!
i love that its has its own quirks.. its so true lol.. nine.. wow.. and totally understand that comment on some are bigger energy hogs then others..