Is it worth buying a chest freezer?

beemuzed

I bitterly regret replacing my trusty old chest freezer last summer with an upright! It was nearly 30 years old and there was a problem with the seal which meant it kept icing up. Deicing was an issue as I did find it hard bending to get to the bottom of it....but my chest freezer drawers are ridiculously small - couple of ice cream tubs and the drawer is full!
Result, I'm now looking for a smaller chest freezer to supplement the upright!
Go for it!!!!

blackandwhitebunny

I would recommend buying the biggest one you can afford and have space for. You can fill it up to start with with bottles of water so its cheaper to run and will soon find it fills up with bargains.:)

caitybabes

We got one from Mum and Dad's garage that they weren't using as the freezer in our fridge freezer only has a couple of shelves. I'd never had one before but I've found it to be brilliant, space-wise. It's not massive, looks like the size of an under counter freezer but holds so much more.

My main piece of advice is this: buy a whiteboard and some drywipe pens. Stick it to the top of your freezer with blu-tack. Whenever you put something in the freezer, write it on. Whenever you take something out, wipe it off. It's a system that works really well for us and means we know what's in there without looking and also we know something is definitely in there if it's on the list so the rummaging will be worth it!

When we first got ours I filled it with old milk bottles full of water to take up some capacity and make it run better.

I love having the freezer space because we can buy plenty of milk on offer so we never have to pop to the shops for milk. Can also put homemade bread in there and plenty of homemade ready meals.

We're moving to a new place with a bigger fridge freezer but I really want to hold onto our chest freezer anyway!

P.S. have you thought about getting a second hand one on ebay, freecycle or local paper ads?

dandy-candy

caitybabes wrote: »

I love having the freezer space because we can buy plenty of milk on offer so we never have to pop to the shops for milk.

I didn't know you could freeze milk! Doesn't it seperate?

caitybabes

dandy-candy wrote: »

I didn't know you could freeze milk! Doesn't it seperate?

Nope, it doesn't separate, but it does go yellow in the freezer, but goes back to white when it's back out again. We go away for the weekend lots so it's great to be able to take a bottle out of the freezer on Fri night before we leave and it's ready for cereal and tea on Monday morning.

It does take a couple of days for a 4pt to defrost but the 2pts we've been getting recently have been quite quick.

I reckon you can just about taste the difference if you have a straight glass of milk on its own, but for tea and cereal etc. it's fine.

blackandwhitebunny

I'm lucky enough to have a great big chest freezer and a normal sized upright one (5 drawers). We buy a lot of meat in bulk and I'm constantly on the look out for whoopsies. I use the upright for veggies and fruit and usually put sausages and bacon in there. What I do though is every two weeks or so I go into the big chest freezer and transfer meat etc for the next fourteen days meals into the upright freezer as its easier to get it out and that way I know exactly where things are.

cutestkids

I would definatly recomend a chest freezer we have one in the shed and I couldn't do without it.
Because of where I live there are no big supermarkets nearby so I have to shop in bulk once a month and I get everything I will need except fresh fruit salad stuff etc.

It is very usefull if you do a lot of batch cooking I currently have about 10 days worth of dinners in mine which I label and I can just go out to the freezer the night before and get the following days dinner,
I usually have about a dozen loafs of bread in there as well along with bags of frozen veg, homebaking such as pancakes, cupcakes etc all ready just to bring out and defrost.

My model has 2 large baskets which can be moved at the top of the freezer these hold a fair bit and I tend to put homemade dinners in these to freeze then transfer them to the main body of the freezer when frozen.

Great also for when you see special offers on chickens etc last week I got 4 whole chicken for £10.00 without the chest freezer I would not have been able to take advantage of this.

I would say go for the biggest one you can afford and have the space for, defrosting has never really been an issue, I have had mine for over 3 years and only had to defrost it fully once in that time.
When I defrost mine I wait till the stocks are running low then transfer what I can in to the smaller fridge freezer in the house sitch off the chest freezer and leave the lid open and it defrosts really quickly. I cheat a bit when getting the water out of the bottom as I have a wet dry carpet cleaner and just use the hose on this to suck the water out, it can then just be wiped over with a cloth before turned back on.

Best thing I have ever bought.

Marie x

zippychick

ive merged this with our previous chest freezer thread

Zip