Guest post from Anita
On Sunday night, I opened my chest freezer and found a new Eat from the Pantry Challenge unexpectedly waiting for me this week. In other words, all the food had thawed out, and everything had to be thrown away except one loaf of bread, one package of hot dogs, and the kids’ Freezies.
Instead of feeling sick to my stomach for all that wasted food (and money!), I decided right away to be grateful for this situation. The first and obvious thankful part was that an already-thawed freezer is super easy to clean!
But after a few more days of reflection, here’s what I have decided:
1. I realized what I truly valued in my freezer.
Some of the food I was a little upset to lose like the roasts, Ham and Cheese Pockets, and Brown Bag Burritos. But there were a few items in there that I really didn’t mind throwing away. I’m going to use this to more carefully inform my grocery shopping choices, especially when it comes to sales and “stocking up.”
2. I realized how much food we had accumulated.
I was grateful that I hadn’t yet divided up and frozen the 10lbs of chicken I had just purchased. But once I also took a few minutes to inventory the dry goods in the pantry, I came up with a list of 10 meals without having to purchase a single thing!
While I will still try to purchase a little extra over the coming weeks to rebuild our freezer supply — especially meat — I think I’m going to buy less at a time. This should help cut our grocery budget down even more.
3. I realized (again) how much of my security was wrapped up in having extra food on hand.
This is a thought that’s been developing for me over the past few months, and something that is probably rooted in an economically-challenged childhood in a single-parent home. I feel more secure when I have a full freezer and pantry. But knowing that’s why I sometimes buy more than I need, allows me to stop and choose not to do it. There’s freedom in truth.
4. I realized how grateful I am for my Emergency Fund!
Once we determined that the freezer was just unplugged instead of broken, I was glad that we wouldn’t need to replace it. However, I also realized that if we had needed to do so, or really needed to purchase extra food for this week, we could have used part of our small emergency fund to do so.
A few years ago, a kaput appliance would have meant using a whole paycheck and playing catch-up with our regular bills for months.
5. I realized how much progress we’ve made in the last couple years!
The fact that I had food in the freezer, hadn’t paid full price for any of it, know how I’m going to replace it, can eat this week in the meantime, and have an Emergency Fund in case the situation had been worse, are all significant benchmarks to me of how much I have learned and developed new financial habits over the last four years.
While I know there’s still work to do, I’m grateful for this “test” and the encouragement of seeing just how far I have come already.
In a couple weeks, I’m going down to part-time work so I can spend more time teaching my children at home. While we’ll be saving some money on childcare, I still need to trim my household budget a little more to make our new arrangement work. Thanks to my freezer incident, I know exactly how I can do just that!
Anita works full-time {soon to be part-time} and homeschools her kindergartner in the evenings after the toddler goes to bed. She and her husband are rebuilding their credit and relearning financial habits after a bankruptcy, loss of a small business, and unemployment.
Laura says
This happened to me, but I lost all of my stored pumped breast milk, so I will be honest that I was sad about it. Once I got over that loss and adjusted to the changes I had to make in feeding my infant, I really didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal for my family. We lived without a freezer for over a month because finding a fridge to fit our space was challenging. We lived well and comfortably during that time. Thank you for listening and for your post. It reminded me to look in the pantry more.
Linda says
I really liked reading this post. Our freezer thawed when the door didn’t get shut all the way. The bottom 4 shelves thawed and the upper shelf totally froze solid with ice as it tried to keep itself cold. Since we had been gone for the weekend and didn’t know for sure how long it had been open, we had to throw out everything. It was eye-opening. I had been stuffing it full of meat, which was great. I also was cramming in leftovers that I can never bear to throw out even if the meal wasn’t a winner the first time around. I will no longer make a giant pan of an untried recipe, and then save 2/3rds of it thinking I can fix it later. Not only did that not happen even once, I could not remember what exactly had been wrong the first time. I also got a couple of plastic bins and boxes from around the house and have been more purposeful in organizing items stored in there. Meat, fish and poultry on on shelf, lunch sized portions of leftovers and soups on another and bagged veggies in a basket on the bottom. Thanks again for the post, it brought some new insight to me.
Jessica says
Hey, don’t forget you also saved a little money on the electricity when it was unplugged! 🙂
Jen says
The same thing happened to me just last week! Except the fridge quit working and we caught it in time and only had to throw out 3 things. Needless to say I have been very creative in the kitchen using up things to regain space back in my fridge. Our electric company even picked up our old fridge and gave us a $50.00 check in exchange which we plan on putting towards a new second fridge.
Rhonda Murray says
Sure, I knew that the pantry had to be full and I’ve had an upright freezer and now a hand me down chest for years, but I’ve always attributed it to the time there was 1 can of ravioli in the pantry and I guess Mom didn’t eat. That will never happen in my house, in fact, I’m slowly learning to can, dehydrate and build an on purpose food storage. I need to stop shopping and purposefully eat all we have, filling the freezer with gallons of water if there’s space (haha won’t be for a while), but I’m also worried about food prices going WAY up. I bet if I sold the chest freezer, I’d save a chunk of electricity bill every month, and I could use that money to buy the higher priced groceries.
Rebecca says
You have such a great attitude about this whole fiasco! I love the wisdom you shared through your reflections on the incident. It made me think about the food in my freezer and ways to use what I already have. I have a freezer full of food that needs to be eaten instead of added to constantly. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Mary Ann says
Kudos to Anita for doing this blog post. I realize how much of MY security is wrapped up in having food in the freezers (chest and over fridge) and in the cupboards… also due to periods when I was younger when security was measured by a roof over our heads and food on the table. I need to break that thinking, and with the help of this website and others, I’m trying!
Aimee says
What an inspiring attitude and perspective! Thanks for sharing your story.
jan says
I can so relate to #3. But didn’t it feel great to know it wasn’t the end of the world….that you had other food to provide the family with? I am working on clearing out 3 freezers that were out of control.
K says
I can so relate to this post…. well, mostly. Our deep freezer was accidentally unplugged. Thankfully, it was on my shopping day, so I noticed what had happened early enough to salvage the food in the freezer.
Good thing is that I was forced to clean the freezer. I was also able to organize the freezer to get a true inventory of what I actually had that was usable and what had been long forgotten and freezer burned.
Great Post! I am sorry that you had to discard so much, though. I know that feeling as well.
Christy says
Would love another guest post about how you homeschool a 5 year old after the toddler goes to bed!
Andrea says
It depends on the child! My kids are all night owls and have had some great learning experiences after dinner. In fact, we just finished a science experiment and now they are researching different types of pet birds with their dad.
Meghan says
this very same thing happened to us this past saturday …. i ended up throwing out a ton, including 14 frozen bananas (was not about to make 4 loaves of banana bread @ midnight). thank you for posting!! glad im not alone
Jessica @ The Abundant Wife says
Thank you for sharing in your bio! My husband and I are trying to pay off all our debts after our salary was reduced by 50% in 2010, followed by a lay-off and year-long unemployment while living in my parents’ basement. That crisis made us take a serious look at our finances and lifestyle. If our freezer were to lose power, I think I would go through much the same feelings that you did. Thanks for sharing your perspective! 🙂
Mary @ The Mommy Job says
I love your attitude! I’m not sure I would have been so positive… I can totally relate to your comment about security being found in a stocked pantry and freezer… It brings me comfort seeing all that too.
dina says
This is always my biggest fear-losing my stockpile. We have 3 freezers, a free upright from my SIL, a small we had purchased before kids and the freezer attached to the frig. For the two in the garage we bought a freezer alarm. It is such a load off my mind to have the alarm “watching” for accidental defrosting. I also started 2 years ago only using the stockpile every 3 months for one whole month. This helped save our grocery bill and forces me to take inventory of our stockpile. We only buy fresh produce and milk during that month.
Carrie says
Oh my gosh. This same thing happened to me. Our chest freezer broke and everything had to go in our house freezer or refrigerator. It was a dose of reality to see how much I’d accumulated. I got so sick of Farmer John breakfast sausage by the end of the week! I am glad now, because the supply is much more manageable. Great post!
K D says
Like Jessica, we lost power (for six days) on June 29th. The outages were so wide spread and long lasting that we lost all the food in our refrigerator and chest freezer. I had been needing to clean out and defrost the freezer anyway so I looked at it as an opportunity. Like Sarah T. it sickened me that so much food was wasted/sent to the trash (I believe ours is burned to generate electricity). After testing the freezer to make sure it still works (it does) I elected to try living without it. Our power was restored on July 5th and I have restcoked the freezer portion of the refrigerator, but the chest freezer is empty/unplugged. If I don’t feel the need for it within the next few months I will find someone that can use it. Perspective is everything, thank you Anita for sharing your story.
Stacy says
I have the same issues because of growing up poor. I am “uncomfortable” unless I’m stocked up on groceries. I started stocking up after my divorce when I was a single Mom and I can’t even describe the sense of security that it gave me to know that we could eat even if we didn’t have anything else.
I had a fully stocked freezer when I remarried in June 2009. I’d just bought about 15 rolls of ground turkey on sale and a bunch of frozen veggies plus all the chicken & stuff already in there. My Mom was at my house and unplugged the freezer cord by mistake. We came back from our little weekend honeymoon to the scent of a mass murder. LOL. It’s funny now. Not so much at the time 🙂
Sarah T. says
Oh wow… just reading it makes me sick to my stomach. I hate wasting- money and food! I LOVE your perspective and thank you for taking time to write this. I have a LOT of food in my freezer and need to eat it, not always buy more. I can buy sale items much faster than we can eat them. 🙂
Danielle says
I am a little curious how the freezer became unplugged. That sounds like a story in itself!
Anita says
It was also due to a storm, actually! They warned us to unplug electronics, so after getting the computer, etc, I thought maybe I should hit the basement and “save” the washer and dryer… and freezer. Just didn’t remember to go plug the basement items back in until it was time to do laundry again! 🙁
Jessica says
We lost much of our food during a 5 day power outage due to the severe storms that came through on June 29. I’d just stocked up because my son’s 2nd birthday was July 1, and we were having a birthday party. Due to the power outage, we had to cancel his party 🙁
Thankfully, a friend nearby got her power back after just 1 1/2 days so the contents of our chest freezer we took to her house. We still lost about $200-300 of food from our refrigerator and above the fridge freezer.
My husband and I were both very upset, not only the monetary cost but the sheer waste of it. It all had to go into the garbage and it was a lot of waste to the landfill. We try to minimize our waste especially food waste and we generate very little garbage compared to nearby families. It disgusted us that all that food went to waste 🙁
Jessica says
Could you grill all the meat you had? We had a hurricane right after I bought about 6lbs of shrimp. If we had lost power for one more day, we were planning a massive grilled shrimp party. Also, if you let something like chicken defrost for a few days (leaving it in a closed freezer chest), and then cook it, it gives you about 5 days to save the food, assuming you can freeze the cooked food in time.
Marie says
What a great perspective to have!! I wish I had that perspective last night when after spending ALOT of time to make a photo book for a friend on the very last page of the book the site had an error and LOST the entire thing!!!! It robbed me of sleep last night and put me in a funk today!
Thank you for sharing your story!
Angela says
very inspiring story, I’m glad your freezer isn’t broken. I just had to replace a new refrigerator and water heater and believe me it was costly but had to be done. I just keep praying and god will help me get through
Ashley Merrithew says
Love this! I recently cleaned out my freezer just because it was too full. I threw away quite a bit of stuff because it had been sitting in there too long. I also now have a better idea of what I should and shouldn’t bother buying and freezing. It’s feels so good!