It seems amazingly insensitive to complain about caring for our stash of frozen food... That being said, I want to show you something. We are blessed to have a large chest freezer. I LOVE my freezer all except for one characteristic it has. It has to be defrosted, manually, from time to time. I generally get around to it about twice a year. Today was the day. I gathered up lots of blankets to wrap the food in so it wouldn't thaw out while I defrosted and cleaned out the freezer. I took everything out and discarded a few things that had gotten too old. I try not to let that happen, but sometimes it does anyway. I placed a fan in the freezer to circulate the air so the ice would melt more rapidly, and then I had to remove all of the water and wipe out the interior. There! It was all done and I placed all of the items back into the freezer.
As I did that, I made a note of everything it contains on my white board that is hanging beside it:
If you actually click on the picture, you can see exactly what we have in there.
I still prefer a chest freezer over an upright that can defrost itself. Those are very handy, but they can't hold as much, and the food will not keep as long.
Oh, joy. You have my sympathies! Our chest freezer is smaller than yours, but defrosting it is still a big job. In winter, I schedule the job for a particularly cold day and just store the food outdoors. In summer, I clean my freezer just before the main harvest season when there is least food.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good system. I try to be organized about it, but it frequently ends up at the bottom of my "list" instead of at the top where it needs to be.
DeleteI feel sorry for you, I really do. I would hate doing that! I need to clean out our inside freezer, not because of frost but just because it needs to be cleaned out and I keep putting off doing it.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard that a chest freezer keeps food longer. Our upright freezer seems to work really well and is of course frost freeze. The food in there is rock solid, much more frozen than in our normal freezer in the house. We keep the upright freezer locked at all times and only open it occasionally.
I do think I read that somewhere, but also from my own experience I believe the chest freezer does better. Of course, if you don't keep things for a LONG time in there, it's a moot point anyway. I had an upright freezer for many years. It was so much easier to deal with!
DeleteOf course, uprights might have improved since I had mine.
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