Saving your Refrigerator/Freezer

[arminnie]

A friend of mine has devised the following plan after losing a very expensive refrigerator and freezer last year (filled with shrimp, fish, etc.).

She has purchased those very large Igloo containers that you often see in the back of pickup trucks. If she has to evacuate she will put everything in them with BLOCKS of ice. Not crushed ice - it melts too fast. And then duct tape up the coolers.

If she can come back in a few days the food will be fine and she will put it back in the refrig/freezer. If something happens like last year and she is unable to get back, she will be able to just dispose of the Igloo containers and not lose her expensive appliances.

Some people might even be able to take the coolers with them, but most people wouldn't have room for them.

 

[Muffin]

Hi arminnie,
That's a really good idea. We were just going to not keep so much stuff in our refrigerator during hurricane season from now on, but what you said seems like a much better plan.

When we got to go back to our house to "look and leave" 8 days after the hurricane, one of our neighbors still had some ice cubes from a bag of ice that hadn't melted and some fish that was still frozen hard in the middle. She must have really had a packed freezer.

In my neighborhood, people are still dragging refrigerators out to the curbs for pick up, 7 and 1/2 months later, i can't even imagine what the insides of those things must look and smell like. If I have to drive by one, I always make sure I drive fast.

I have to say I do love my new french door with freezer on the bottom fridge.

 

[Camping Cat]

I still can't bring myself to stock up my new fridge/freezer. Right now the only things in my freezer are ice cubes. I only shop for a few days at a time. I can't (or I guess it would be more correct to say "won't) buy meat for the freezer. I used to buy meat on sale and freeze it in meal-sized portions for future use, but after that horrible day of cleaning out all that putrid meat and having to unwrap it and bury it in a hole in the back yard (per instructions), I find it hard to force myself to handle meat again. I keep wondering when I'll get over this phobia, but for now, that's just how it is. I'll stand in front of the open fridge/freezer and just marvel at the clean, white, almost empty, odorless beauty of it. You'd better believe that I will never leave anything in the freezer again when we evacuate!