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I've always just thrown a spare fridge in the garage for "adult beverages". Get a new one for the kitchen, throw the old one out there. Did in both Texas and PA, so they've seen all kinds of temp extremes. No problems......
We went thru this a few years back when our old garage fridge died. We were told that the newer 'energy efficent' fridges would not work well (if at all) in garage environments where the temperature dropped below about 50 degrees. At sears we were pointed towards one that specified that it would work in such an environment. It had an additional advantage that it did not have a freezer compartment! It was full width shelves top to bottom. Great for cases of water, soda, large trays of food for picnics, etc. I think they actually took a small upright freezer and recalibrated the thermostat to keep it in the 'cold' instead of 'frozen' range. It sits right next to our upright freezer in the garage. Has worked well for at least 5 years.
Girl (can you hear my voice saying that, love it), I wonder how much do these 4 things cost you in electricity every month and would it save you any money by not storing all this food and just buy what you need when you need it. I bet the savings in energy will offset the cost of the food you buy.
Our electric bills are not that bad at all. ~$20 in the winter, and ~$150 in the summer - and that's when we run our A/C too.
My husband used to be a "shop every night for dinner" guy when he lived in NYC - mostly because his kitchen was a 3x3 closet masked as a kitchen (no, I'm not joking). But when we got married and moved to a bigger apartment that allowed him a full fridge, he turned into a once-a-weeker. That held true when we bought a house in NJ.
Then we moved to SC and brought the fridge with us - and ended up buying a house that had a fridge. So we put the old one in the garage. When we started buying meat in bulk, the deep freezer became necessary.
This past summer our garage fridge died - so we bought a used one from a neighbor that was moving out of the country. Then just before we were going to take the dead fridge to the dump, we plugged it back in just for kicks and sure enough - it started working again. So at that point we moved the smaller fridge we bought from the neighbor into the laundry room.
The result is that now we only do major shopping once a month, and then go out for incidentals only when necessary (lettuce & milk being the main two things we go through quickly - and this is even with us having an extra gallon of milk in the second fridge).
I trust that you have a backup generator. That would be a lot of food to lose if you had a power outage!
*lol* Our friends have all said they'll come over for the party if our neighborhood loses power for a significant amount of time, and will bring their grills with them so we have cooking space for everything we'll need to use up.
*lol* Our friends have all said they'll come over for the party if our neighborhood loses power for a significant amount of time, and will bring their grills with them so we have cooking space for everything we'll need to use up.
My old neighbor had to do just that. He had a family of 6, so he had 4-5 deer, at least 2 hogs and some veggies all stored in a big freezer. The thing failed, and we had a block canning party for them. It was a lot of pressure cooking that weekend!
They had pork and venison stew for the rest of the year!
I can't imagine having a family and not having a garage fridge. While our N.C. winters are usually mild we do get some snow and below freezing sometime and of course it gets ungawdly hot in the summer.
We keep water in containers, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches etc in the garage fridge for the kids and this keeps them from running in and out of the house all year.
We buy butter and cheese in bulk and freeze them plus milk and I do lots of marathon cooking and freezing. My food saver and my extra fridge/freezer keep me from having to go to the store as often and I know save me money.
We had second refrigerators in our attached garage for decades in SE New England. No problems.
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