Fridge/Freezer Broken Down

luckofthe_irish

Hi there,

Wondering if any you wonderful old-stylers can help a girl out!

I live in rented accommodation and last night my fridge/freezer broke down for the third time in 6 weeks. I had just done a food shop on the Wednesday, most of which is now ruined and I have calculated I have lost around £200 worth of food because of the breakdowns so I am seriously struggling for this month already. I nor the letting agent can get hold of the landlord so it looks like it won't be fixed until Monday or Tuesday... does anyone have any ideas of how best to be savvy and live without a fridge/freezer without spending too much money?

I am a massive batch cooker and buy my meat in bulk so all of that has been ruined with the freezer defrosting... Freezer is still slightly cold so have put the fridge stuff in the freezer to try and keep it semi cold for today at least. Inside of fridge is already warm so nothing perishable left in there.

Just looking for any suggestions really, am at my wits end with the whole thing and gutted about the waste in terms of food and cost once again.

Thank you in advance

HOWMUCH

If you can keep your freezer closed your food will stay frozen for a few days, take out a couple of days food out of the freezer and place it in the fridge. This will help cool the fridge. Do you have any freezer bags or a cool box keeping your milk etc in a smaller space will be easier.
Do you know anyone that will let you use some of their freezer space? If you don't then you will be able to eat and use a weeks worth of food and be safe out if he freezer. As you take food out of the put scrunched up newspaper in its place. Milk can be kept in a bucket of cold water too. Do not throw your food away at the moment it's not ruined. x

luckofthe_irish

HOWMUCH wrote: »

If you can keep your freezer closed your food will stay frozen for a few days, take out a couple of days food out of the freezer and place it in the fridge. This will help cool the fridge. Do you have any freezer bags or a cool box keeping your milk etc in a smaller space will be easier.
Do you know anyone that will let you use some of their freezer space? If you don't then you will be able to eat and use a weeks worth of food and be safe out if he freezer. As you take food out of the put scrunched up newspaper in its place. Milk can be kept in a bucket of cold water too. Do not throw your food away at the moment it's not ruined. x

Thank you very much for the advice. I have placed some frozen meals in the fridge as you suggested. I have a cool box but I used the freezer packs yesterday and when I got home fridge/freezer was already broken so I could not refreeze them. I did pop them in the freezer in case but they came out still warm this morning.

I don't know anyone who I could borrow freezer space off unfortunately (have just moved to an new area for work). Great idea about the milk in cold water, I have set up my mop bucket and put drinks and milk in there. A lot of the chicken and fish has already gone soft and is not entirely cold, is this OK to use? Even if I cook it to use, is it OK to not have anywhere cold to keep it for a couple of days?

Thanks again!

Ambersuccubus

Cooking thoroughly kills most bacteria, so as long as defrosted items still smell ok, cook them asap to "reset" the risk of them going off. This is the reason you can freeze cooked foods that were frozen as uncooked ingredients - by killing the current batch of bacteria, you reset the clock in terms of spoilage, and can "go again" with freezing, which just prevents bacterial reproduction rather than killing them

Re: keeping the cooked items - well bagged things could be placed in the resevoir of cold water that you refresh from time to time, again to extend the keeping time, but you won't get more than a day or so if your room is otherwise warm. It's easier to donate cooked food than raw to friends/homeless people in your town, etc., if you genuinely won't be able to eat them before they go off, though.

jackyann

This may not help if you're already hard up, but when camping we would buy meat, half to eat on the day, then marinade the rest in wine, and that would keep it "good" for another day.
Remember hat the food is slowly defrosting, so will take about 3 days, and may be good for another couple, so keep a careful eye on it.
If you need to buy milk - either buy UHT, or bring the milk to near boiling and cool - leave skin on until you use it (another camping trick)

Also, if this continues, buy frozen food in small batches and use it to cool a cold box (once your fridge has "warmed up" it will become an
inefficient cold box because of its size, so a small cheap one will be better.

I don't know if this would suit your personality: but once when this happened to me, I rang around, asked people to turn up with salads, cake and drink; cooked up the food and we had a party! I know you don't know many people, but it will make a memorable introduction to neighbours.

I do hope this gets sorted, and I hope that you manage to get some sort of compensation from your landlord, but I don't know the rules about this.

HOWMUCH

You can put some of your fridge items in the cool box with a frozen item(using it as an edible ice pack) sorry I didn't explain myself too well.

luckofthe_irish

Hi all,

Just an update - thank you all so much for your help and advice. I used all of them and they really helped over the weekend! The meat all had to go but manage to salvage some things using your tips. I have now been told I will get a new fridge today, so fingers crossed it will all be sorted. Now I am trying to work up the courage to check my bank account - I always feel so much better if I am ignorant to how much money I don't have...which is a terrible thing I know.

Thank you again