Buying a deep freezer - any advice/rec's?

[MineMail]

Three things:
Mine also has a lock but I can't imagine ever using it.

I only used the lock with young children or when there was a blackout and we didn't want anyone opening it to see if it was still cold.

I've had two upright freezers. I inherited my mother's when she passed and it was manual defrost. If you are a planner who can empty the freezer to defrost as needed, that works fine. If you're not a planner, get the auto defrost, which is what we did with our second freezer. It was easier than unloading everything into coolers or the small freezer so we could defrost/drain/dry the freezer.

I second the "get a light" suggestion.

Our current fridge has a bottom freezer drawer and it's okay, but I have to keep it organized or things get lost or missed. I try to use up everything once or twice a year so I can clean and restock, but it doesn't always work out as planned. Good thing it's frost-free, lol.

We're getting ready to buy a new stand alone freezer and we're going to get an upright. It's more our style.

I keep my blue ice packs in the freezer as a bit of extra cold should the power go out.

 

[StitchFanZ]

We bought the biggest chest freezer we could find - it came with sliding baskets so its real easy to find stuff. The baskets prevent you from needing to stack much stuff and helps to keep stuff organized. Plus the door never gets accidentally left open. The food also keeps better in the chest freezer if you have power outages.

I also bought a food saver sealer as I love buying in bulk and saving portions to use later. i.e. I just bought 40 lbs of fresh sliced strawberries and sealed them up for those months when we don't have fresh inexpensive fruits. You can fill up a large freezer real fast with healthy inexpensive stuff when it is in season.