A few days I wrote an article about "Keepin' it cool" where I talked about the possibility of using a fridge either offgrid or with spotty access to power.
I have a number of responses saying why I do have 4 fridge in the house. Which I found funny because I have NINE of them in the house. My wife is always getting after me for having so many but in response to those people who asked and in defence of what I've done I'll present it to the community.
Here is my response to @fredaig and @monica-ene
Maybe I'll even get some feedback I like feedback
Most People have One Fridge
That's considered normal
And here is our Main Fridge.
(my fridge, my picture)
If you look carefully you'll see a picture of my wife and squint really hard you can see an old picture of myself on there too.
What you would not be able to see is any room for pretty much anything in that fridge!
If you open it up it is full. The freezer part is full. The fridge part is full.
Unfortunately it is full of stuff my sons and I don't want to eat.
A Filipina Habit
Now I live with my wife (obviously) and my mother-in-law (less obviously). Both are Filipina and both suffer from the same bad habit (in my eyes).
When they cook they ALWAYS cook extra. If cooking a meal for four people they will always cook for five or six. I'm the Canadian if I'm cooking for 4 then I will make enough food for 4. I try to make sure that there is nothing extra.
I think my wife is crazy for making extra and she thinks I'm crazy for making just enough. It's one of those things where we agree to disagree.
What happens to the extra food that my wife and mother-in-law make? It gets put into a dish and put into the fridge so someone can eat it later.
That's the problem.
My children won't eat leftovers. I don't care for Filipino food (mostly). As a result my wife is always making a new meal all the time for the kids and more leftover food is put in the fridge regularly. The old leftover food rarely gets eaten.
RESULT: Lots of uneaten leftovers in the fridge
But it gets worse
You see my mother-in-law eats the same food every day. Its a Filipino dish with vegetables (usually Moringa leaf / Squash) and mung beans served with rice. My parents in law love it. My rest of the family don't eat it. My wife wants a different meal every day. That means two sets of leftovers into the fridge every day.
When the kids look for food in the fridge they never know if they are going to find balatung (mother in law's food) or unknown mom food so they just don't bother looking.
If you ask the kids what's in the fridge: Milk and cheese. Everything else is non-edible.
Plus there is no room in the fridge for them to put anything in that they like. It's just crammed with stuff. Some weird turf war between my wife and mother-in-law.
My kids and I have just learned not to go there. Not worth it.
But thre are always good deals on food!
Of course my wife always finds good deals on food at the store. Meat is often found on sale or clearance and comes home. No room in the main fridge so into the freezer it goes. Also there are some "foods from home" that my wife or mother in law buy that go into the freezer for when they get the craving for traditional food.
Those all go into what I'll call "My Wife's Freezer".
With stuff like this in there
Again my son's and I don't go in there. There is meat, fish, chicken and lots of other stuff in there but it typically needs a fair amount of forethought and prep to turn it into a meal. Also I never know if my wife is saving it for an upcoming meal or not and I'm in trouble if I accidently cook something I wasn't supposed to.
So I bought a freezer for easy to prepare foods
I bought a freezer to put single serve portions of meals into. To put easy to prepare foods like frozen french fries, frozen chicken nuggets, ice cream, and so on in. Go into that freezer and you can find something edible with little prep time.
It mostly worked great. Until my wife ran out of room in her freezer and started putting stuff into the second freezer. It is still mostly filled with meals I can pull out and make for the kids quickly but I still find some stuff in there that got snuck in by my wife.
And I bought a small fridge for prepared foods for my diet
Now I was also trying to be on a diet. Part of my poor eating habits was the fact that when I was hungry it was hard to find something quick to prepare. As a result I'd just buy fast food, or eat junk food, or snack on things that weren't healthy. My solution was to prepare food in advance. Fruit parfait. Hummous. Sandwiches. Salads and so on. I would make 5 or 6 of each in advance the put them in a small fridge so there would always be a small fridge with ready to eat food inside.
I know that right now if I'm hungry there are 6 individually wrapped sandwiches in there. Two small tubs of hummous. 5 fruit parfait. Some cottage cheese and yogurt. Healthier snacking options that chocolate bars, instant noodles or grab and go stuff.
Kids know there is edible food in there and so do I. However, my wife also sneaks stuff from the overflowing main fridge. I found a bottle of wine (I don't drink alcohol) and other stuff that sneaks its was in there.
My Children Have Learned--they want their own fridge space
Now after having a cluttered fridge full of leftovers they dislike both of my children have decided they want to have a fridge with food they actually want to eat in there.
When they moved to our suite downstairs they refused to share fridge space. The suite has three people living there and rather than share one fridge with the three room mates my sons refused. One fridge per person. No sharing fridge space.
Each room mate has their own cupboard space and their own fridge. As odd as it may seem it has helped everyone get along much better. There are no accusations of food theft between room mates. No question as to where your space is for your food. Just helps keep the calm between the room mates.
Then again, three fridges in one room is very odd.
The Portable Mini Fridge
Now my wife and I enjoy camping and we both hope to be living off grid in the near future.
Regular fridges don't work for camping and they use too much electricity for living off grid. Well, the mid-sized chest freezer could actually work as its very efficient and with enough solar power could be useful. However, the mini chest fridge/freezer works on a vehicle cigarette lighter. It can work on a small power bank. It provides little strain on solar power. So, I purchased it as a portable unit that I can take wherever I go. It doesn't hold much but knowing I have something I can use off grid or while camping is awesome.
Once my off grid cabin is completed this fridge/freezer will be the main cooling unit there. Although I might buy one more so my wife and I can each keep out own
The Berry Freezer
Which brings us to the last chest freezer.
This one is kept on the back porch. I'll call it the Berry Freezer.
Both of my parents in law pick blueberries during the summer months. As berry pickers they have access to berries at a very low price. $ 1/lb is not an uncommon price. Sometimes they get it for free as they glean what is leftover after the main harvest.
Now the berries we are going to eat end up in one of the main freezers upstairs. However, my wife likes to keep a portion frozen and resell them later when the price increases long after harvest time.
A 5kg box that we paid $11 for around harvest time will often sell for $40 or more in the wintertime. I would guess that this freezer holds 100kg or more blueberries. That would cost us maybe $200 at harvest time and sell for $800 in wintertime.
Making $600 on blueberries is a nice little winter side income.
Now the freezer does use electricity for only about $20/month. Spend $240 in electricity to make $600 in blueberries still comes out to a fairly large net profit.
Which is why we have the berry freezer downstairs on the back porch.
Am I Crazy?
At first glance having 9 fridges / freezers in the house is just plain crazy. However, I see them as peacekeeping units. It lets me have food for my diet when I need it. It helps me have food ready for the kids when necessary. It brings in a little profit from the berry harvest. It makes for peace between room mates in the rental suites. It also provides refridgeration when we are camping or offgrid.
I'd be happy to hear comments or recommendations.
I know its certainly not normal but sometimes being a little abnormal is the best way to make things work 😎
Thanks for reading