Reducing reliance on freezer (long)

kunekune

When I was planning our move to the new house, I had it in mind to get an american style fridge freezer to replace our (knackered) fridge freezer and additional under bench freezer. We couldn't get both of them into the kitchen, and the fridge space wasn't enough anyway. However, after ordering my new beauty yesterday, I suddenly had a thought: would it fit through the doors? And the answer was that it wouldn't, none of our doors are more than 65cm wide and the fridge was 73cm in its narrowest bit. So I changed to order and am now getting a big larder fridge. We need the space for fresh stuff, drinks, etc, and it is HUGE. I keep things like jam and pickles in there, so it is an efficient use of kitchen space. But it means that the freezer will be relegated to the outdoor shed, aka The Tardis, and we'll have no freezer capacity in the kitchen at all. Also, I will have only 2/5 of the amount of freezer space I have at the moment. Maybe some time, I'll get a bigger freezer - will monitor how it works out - but for now, I'm going to try to get used to not having much freezer space.

My ideas so far are:

1. For the next 10 days use as much up as I can (though we are 'overlapping' homes, and I will still have a freezer here for a while after we move out).
2. A lot of the fridge space goes on bread. At the moment I get the bread with my Ocado shop which I have on a Saturday (Dove Farm unsliced wholemeal). But I also have an Abel & Cole delivery on Monday. I like their sliced wholemeal bread (I'm fussy with bread). So I think I might switch Ocado to Friday, get bread for the weekend and Monday with that order, and then get another couple of loaves arrive on the Monday. That way I only need to have room for one loaf in the freezer.
3. We only eat meat 2-3 times a week and fish 1-2 times, veg the rest. So I don't need a mass of meat in the freezer. I will cut the stock back to some emergency mince, sausages, chicken pieces, fish fingers and one lot of decent fish.
4. I will have to reduce the amount of frozen veg I have. But we don't use it anyway .. which is why there's so much. My veg box has most of what I need for a week. The only frozen veg I really use is peas, corn and chips.

The other thing is not being able to stash lots of leftovers ... they often get forgotten anyway. So I will need to be more sensible with quantities, or use things two days in a row. How much fridge space/freezer space do people here have, and how do you get by if you only have three drawers of freezer?

flissh

Hi Kunekune, I have just measured my American style fridge freezer and it is 60 cm from front to back with out the doors. The delivery men take these off to get it in and pop them back on when it is in the kitchen. The Removal men did this too when they moved us out of one house and into another. No probs.

JayJay14

We have n American style side by side and thought we'd never get it in - our delivery men took off the door handles and we just got it through.

kunekune

Ha ... no-one at currys knew they could do that! I don't think I'll tell OH. He'll be a bit annoyed. As I am. Thinking.

fletch3163

I too have no fridge in the house, mine's in the shed. We decided we were going to go under counter for both the fridge and the freezer when we redid the kitchen. It's still a shambles and we've resorted to getting a small fridge when the big one got knackered.

Anyway, now I've got used to putting the brolly up to fetch tomorrow's dinner, it's fine. I just don't store bread any more. I'm a work in progress training myself not to just buy for the sake of it and keep it to bargains. One thing though, you might benefit from cutting out the cooking instructions and binning the packaging, that's what I do to save space.

kunekune

No, on reflection, it's ok! The door wasn't the only problem, now I think about it, it would have stuck out quite a lot in the kitchen, and one cupboard would have been partially blocked. Did the right thing.

kunekune

I like the brolly bit. It'll still be better than now, as at the moment we have a small ff in the kitchen, a ff in the basement and the other freezer. I'm forever travelling up and down stairs looking for onions, drinks, etc! Having all the fridge together is well worth the short walk to the freezer. If it is a real pain in the winter, I'll consider putting in the hall even though it would block the cupboard under the stairs.