32. Filling your Freezer

Ahhh!  The freezer. The sometimes dreaded, often mysterious cavernous appliance that saves money when used correctly. By filling the freezer, you can purchase in bulk and divide up your purchases into portion sizes for your family. Since freezers use less energy when they are full, this ends up saving money on two fronts.

One of the things that I have discovered is that sometimes the freezer becomes a wasteland for food I had not seen in months and only the stuff on top gets used. This ended up costing us money, so I came up with a solution. I use a dry erase marker to notate what is in the freezer and can be adjusted as the frozen foods are used.  I began by just writing with the dry erase marker on the front of the freezer. If you have an upright freezer, this works very well. For the chest freezer, I ended up spending time on my knees on the garage floor (this did not work for me, especially in the winter). So, I began using a small dry erase board to keep track of the food that is living in the big freezer. Then as we create the menu, we bring in the items we need to the kitchen freezer (basically grocery shopping in the freezer).

Until tomorrow!