Buying a Freezer

[SweetErika]

I got some very valuable advice here when I was shopping for our washer & dryer, so I'm coming back for more!

What should I be looking for in a chest freezer? Do you have one you really do or don't like? Important features? Best/worst brands? Anything else?

Thanks in advance!

 

[HowMayIPleaseU]

I have a chest freezer and I hate it. I very much want to replace it with an upright. It's extremely difficult to keep organized (even with milk crates and wire baskets in there) and hard to find things and keep stock rotated.

That said they are certainly more energy efficient and do keep the food fully frozen (probably better than uprights). They also can more easily hold bulky things like a whole turkey.

Frost free costs more money but doesn't need to be manually defrosted (or at least not as often). Get one with a drain in the bottom for easier defrosting if necessary.

Try to choose your size carefully. All freezers run more efficiently when fully stocked.

 

[SweetErika]

Great info; thanks!

An upright would certainly be easier to organize, but we simply don't have the space for one that will actually hold enough stuff to make it worth it. We want to put the freezer in the laundry room, and have about 36w x 29d x 55h inches of space to work with (that includes the 3" on either side and 1" in back necessary for air circulation).

Plus, I can't see us paying hundreds more for the convenience of an upright - we're only budgeting about $200 for this purchase in the first place.

 

[buxxxom]

In this situation, gravity can be your friend. We've had both: an upright handed down from my parents and a chest freezer that we bought. The obstacle we ran into was that the upright freezer was in the garage, and things piled up around it like bicycles, camping stuff, etc. Occasionally, stuff would fall against the door, and sometimes it would crack open a bit. With a chest freezer, this hasn't happened. It's disheartening to open the freezer and see a lot of thawed veggies that I worked so hard to put up in the summer!

I recommend the chest if only for that reason. I use sturdy cardboard boxes to keep things organized and don't really have to spend that much time sorting and stuff. Good luck!

 

[SweetErika]

In this situation, gravity can be your friend. We've had both: an upright handed down from my parents and a chest freezer that we bought. The obstacle we ran into was that the upright freezer was in the garage, and things piled up around it like bicycles, camping stuff, etc. Occasionally, stuff would fall against the door, and sometimes it would crack open a bit. With a chest freezer, this hasn't happened. It's disheartening to open the freezer and see a lot of thawed veggies that I worked so hard to put up in the summer!

Yep, even if it would fit in our garage right now (we desperately need to have a big sale!), I'm pretty sure that'd happen to us, too. There are just too few places to put it where it'd still get used and I think we only have one outlet, which is on a wall with a bunch of shelves anyway.

I recommend the chest if only for that reason. I use sturdy cardboard boxes to keep things organized and don't really have to spend that much time sorting and stuff. Good luck!

That's a good idea. When HMIPU mentioned milk crates, I also thought about using a few of those smaller clear plastic storage bins, or something similar.

Our fridge freezer is one of those big, separate, roll-out drawers on the bottom, and while food does get lost, it's not too hard to find stuff. It'll probably be a lot easier to find things in both freezers when we're able to sort them into two, rather than try to pack everything into just one. I'll mostly be storing fruit, veggies, dinners and the ice cream maker bowl in the chest freezer, so it shouldn't be TOO bad if I think about organization from the start and keep up with it.

 

[A_Kefka]

I got one a while ago for under $200 (don't remember exactly but I think it was around $160). Given that stuff tends to get buried and forgotten since you can't see it an upright would be nice. But if you get one with some sort of organizer set-up you should be ok. Its a Magic Chef, a little under 5cu. Ft. I'm pretty happy with how it works and how much it holds, although since I started buying more meat in bulk after getting it I still run out of room. Oh well, lol.

 

[NippleMuncher]

Growing up on a 100 acre ranch, we had two of them, plus an 8'x16' walk in cold room. We were pretty self sufficient back in those days. My mother maintained two of the larges available chest freezers with all sundry of things, from veggies to fruit, to the yearling beef and 100 chickens put in them each year. There were other things too, like home made ice cream.

The key to a chest freezer is to stock it and organize it properly. Long term storage goes into the bottom, while short term and frequently needed items go on top. Keep it organized and the amount of time the lid is open is minimal. yes, you'll have to dig occasionally for something, but when you get your system down, you'll know right where to go for what you want.

I can't offer a particular brand, we always had Kenmore or Frigidaire, though IMHO both of those brands have gone downhill significantly in the past decade. Also, the fuller you keep them, the more efficient they are. A solid block of ice is better than dead air space.

 

[SweetErika]

I got one a while ago for under $200 (don't remember exactly but I think it was around $160). Given that stuff tends to get buried and forgotten since you can't see it an upright would be nice. But if you get one with some sort of organizer set-up you should be ok. Its a Magic Chef, a little under 5cu. Ft. I'm pretty happy with how it works and how much it holds, although since I started buying more meat in bulk after getting it I still run out of room. Oh well, lol.

Do you recall about how long you've had it (like over a year? 2? 5?) and where you got it? I read a few reviews on Magic Chef that were very mixed, so I'm interested to hear how well it's lasted for you if you've had it for more than a year.

 

[NippleMuncher]

There are only three or four appliance manufacturers in the US, most other "domestic" brands are private labeled by them. For instance, Whirlpool, Maytag, and Amana are all under the same manufacturer. I believe that Magic Chef is a GE product.

If you Google any name brand with "subsidiaries", it will likely bring up all brands under particular labels, i.c., "Whirlpool subsidiaries" or "GE subsidiaries".

 

[albertaboy]

A freezer is the worlds simplest appliance, thye really have no features to speak of except the automatic defrosting.

If you can't go upright, get the smallest one available. Stuff will just keep getting lost in the bottom and there is no real advantage of being bigger. What you can save by buying in bulk you will lose in lost freezer burnt food that you forgot was there.

 

[A_Kefka]

I think its about 2.5 or 3 years now, got it at home depot. Only issue we've had with it was the hinge started to squeak, but a little wd40 took care of that.

 

[Noor]

I have a smallish kenmore upright that I have had for about 20 yrs. It works for me. I tend to store my sweaters in part of it in the summer and food in the winter. I used to have it full of food all year round but after a series of tornadoes and power outages I stopped restocking it during spring/summer.

My frig also has a fairly big freezer as part of it. Its a Costco size frig, with room for two gallon jugs on the door. Way too big, things fall over.

 

[breezyblue]

My mom has a medium sized chest freezer made by kenmore that we all find very useful. It has been going I would guess for 10 years now with no problems. I would suggest though only getting a freezer as deep as you can comfortably reach down into. It's no problem now, but when i was smaller I had a heck of a time getting things out of it.

One nice feature that i find very useful is that it has its own wire shelving in the top part of it that we keep things we use often such as frozen veggies and hot pockets. If I was looking for a new one I think i would probably try to find one with two separate compartments so that I could fill one with things often used and the other with long term storage so that I wouldn't have to let all of the cold air out every time I opened it. Also I would recommend using see through storage containers so that you don't have to go opening everything up and pulling things out to know what is in them.

 

[fire_breeze]

Growing up, we had both an upright and a chest, which we used extensively. The one thing that we all liked about the chest is that not only did it last forever (over 25 years) but it was easy to close, preventing the accidental defrost. If I'm not mistaken, it was a WhirlPool. We just used wire hanging baskets to organise it, and there was no problems.


My neighbour bought a chest freezer, Kenmore Energy Star, which I think it was a 13 cu. ft. Anyway, she says that the money saved on hydro was well worth the extra money spent, and she is very very satisfied with how her freezer works.

Good luck.