When I bought the new fridge, even though on paper it had larger space for both fridge and freezer, I felt like I had less storage, particularly in the freezer. Like you, I like to freeze some produce and buy some meats in bulk to portion up for future use. I ended up buying a small chest freezer (a used one for only $40) and keep it in the basement by the washer/dryer. There is nowhere else in my house to put it but it is easy to access. I've no organization system -- I mostly remember what I have and where, although I have bought frozen veggies that I thought I was out of only to find I did have another bag -- no problem since we go through them fast.

We have a separate chest freezer & an extra (old) frig in the basement. We sort of organize... all frozen fruit & juices are in the refrigerator freezer. Items that we make & freeze - soup, stews etc, are on one side of the freezer & everything else is on the other side of the freezer. We label & date everything in the freezers & refrigerator. We cook in big batches & eat "leftovers" and freeze a lot.

I have a mid-size upright freezer in the mudroom, which adjoins the kitchen. It's less efficient, energy-wise, than a chest freezer, but easier to see everything, and I like storing certain things in the door shelves--mostly butter, and frozen juice cans. Beside it is an older fridge, which probably is no longer necessary, except that I keep my flours, grains, and dried beans in it, to discourage vermin. I also keep extra fruit in it--we buy from local orchards when in season. It's nice to have the extra space when I need to store items for a holiday meal or other large gathering. Unfortunately, my electric bill takes some of the joy out of having that convenience.

7 cubic foot chest freezer in the spare room that is not far from the kitchen that will someday be transformed into an indoor laundry. It's just the right size to hold all the extras without getting overwhelmed by buying too much. I prefer chest freezers. I defrost it twice a year. Takes me about an hour is warm weather, two in cold weather.

I have five chest freezers in the garage. We live on a farm and will butcher cow/hog. I also have a giant garden and will make big batches to freeze like sweet corn, all kinds of berries, and broccoli. I also make big batches of soups, chilis, and casseroles so I have lots of different sizes of containers and shapes.

I always label and date with freezer tape and use clear plastic containers for say bags of strawberries that may fall over. Other stuff I neatly stack with like items. I use FIFO (first in first out) so I am always rotating when I add new stuff which for what I freeze is not very often.

I have two large chest freezers and the other three are upright. It is definitely easier to organize in the upright, but I do use boxes in the chests to keep things tidy so each box only had one kind of thing.

Our electric bill is high but our farm (corporation) pays for it so I don't know what the breakout cost would be.

I've always had a separate freezer. For many years, it was in my cool utility basement - I didn't always use it to full advantage with it inconveniently located to the kitchen. It had plenty in it, I wasn't keeping close track of the contents like I might have.

This house has a cubby in the hallway from the mudroom the perfect size for a freezer. On the same floor as my kitchen ;) I downsized a little to an 18 cu ft energy efficient model a couple of years ago. It's full. Very full.

In a warmer room now and with me using it, opening the door more often, I have to defrost twice a year instead of just once in Fall. Everything goes into every cooler we own, I put a little space heater in front of the open door, and can have it wiped dry, refilled and running again in just under an hour.

My system is loose. It's berries, frozen fruit on one shelf (upright model). We pick wild berries in season and I will freeze enough for years worth of pies and cobblers. Shrimp, whole chickens and pork products on another. Beef has it's own shelf. Vegetables, but also butter, ice cream, desserts fill the last and the door compartments.

We have a small 5c/ft freezer in the garage. I do the some thing & fill it with freezer meals about 4 times a year. We love it.

have had large chest freezer in basement and smaller upright freezer in garage which is adjacent to entry into kitchen end of home. Prefer the garage setup-it was an inside wall, in a cubicle and not particularly exposed to temperature fluctuations of seasons. Smaller freezer is vastly better than larger freezer.....there is just so much more food available year round now. Prefer to freeze what gets used within a couple months...couple weeks is even better.

We have a full built in fridge in our main kitchen and then a full freezer in our pantry. We do not have any kids, but if we did, I would probably need another fridge freezer combo!

gw · More Info

gw · More Info

We have an upright freezer in our mudroom/laundry room which is between the garage and the kitchen so it's very convenient for us.

We have a 13 cu ft chest freezer in the office (nearest room to the kitchen area). The two upper baskets are perfect for the daily/weekly items you use. Usually it is the odd frozen veggie, ice cream container or Costco convenience food/entrée in a large bag. Opened items all gravitate to my kitchen fridge/freezer.

The lower portion of the chest freezer is divided up by open top boxes or square sided plastic buckets, with an open free space section on one side. The boxes are as deep the freezer and go up to the bottom of the upper baskets. This grid work in the bottom of the freezer allows me to stack items vertically by type and also keeps items from shifting around when you are removing other items. It is used for items that I may purchase in bulk or process/butcher once a year.

One tall box has all my pork cuts in it, another has all the chicken. A third has all my garden preserved squash and green bean ziplocks and freezer bags. A fourth has all the extra big store bought bags of frozen fruit. A fifth one has my beef and venison in freezer bags. The "free" side is for stacking whole turkeys or pork loins.

I can see when a category is getting low, no food types mix (hide) with each other, and there is far less jostling and puncturing of packaging by having everything in it's place.

I have a full size upright freezer and a full size upright refrigerator (no freezer on that one) in the garage. They came with the house, along with the rather small side by side in the kitchen and a regular refrigerator in the MIL apartment downstairs. Between the 4 fridge/freezers, the hot tub, 2 electric hot water heaters, and electric ceiling heat in 2 bedrooms, I die a little inside every time I open the electric bill email.

I definitely prefer the upright freezer for organization but I will admit that I don't have much of a system in place and I do sometimes forget what's in there.

I don't have a separate freezer or even freeze that much (we live a block from Safeway and two blocks from Whole Foods), but even if my freezer in the kitchen, I try to keep things labeled (meats and fish - when did I freeze them) and also to keep three separate spaces - one side for meats (and fish and poultry), one for frozen vegetables and Trader Joe's stuff (pot stickers mostly - they're great), and the upper tray for ice cream and the like.

I have an upright manual-defrost freezer in the basement. I stop up on butter, veggies, meat, and pizzas when on sale, the 5# box of blueberries from the summer market, and keep appetizers on hand (those French class parties sneak up on ya, and it's nice to have mini-quiches on hand!) I also keep frozen leftovers and the occasional prepared dishes from my local Italian store there (mm, lasagna)

i organize by putting all the frozen fruits and veggies in the bottom basket. Poultry on the next shelf. Beef above that. Pork and fish above that. Pizza and appetizers on the top shelf. Butter and little things like leftover frozen celery leaves, jalapeño, citrus zest are in the door.

I wrap meat etc individually in Press n Seal, then in ziploks labeled with what's in the bag, approx weight of the items, and the date.

Im pretty much the only person putting things in there, so it stays pretty much like that. But I can tell my family "go get the pound of ground beef on the middle shelf on the right side, the one towards the front not towards the back." And they are more likely to come back up with it (guys, sheesh).

In my skinny side-by-side, I use fridge bins! Keeps stuff from disappearing at the back. In the "deep freeze", though, for some reason they are more of a hindrance. Probably because I have so little variety in there.

I have a separate small freezer in my utility room. I do batch cooking and freeze individual servings in labeled stacked zip bags. Organized by shelf - 3 shelves: soups, pasta meals, rice meals. I keep a list of what I have made on my computer so I can "see" what I want to eat that day and only dig through the appropriate shelf. :-) *Raw* ingredients - meat, veggies, cheeses, breads are in the freezer part of a standard r/f in the kitchen.

I believe the key to not forgetting what is in a freezer is to use what is in there before buying more food. My grandmother, (who always had a large chest freezer in her basement) would tell me, "Throwing food away is the same thing as taking money out of your purse and throwing it in the trash."

If I were building a house I would love to have a separate freezer in the kitchen or pantry if space permitted.

upright freezer on ground level with W/D., we are in split level.... had it for 25 years and counting!!! couldn't imagine not having it!! we shop at Bj's, freeze meals and meats so its necessity in my house. would like a bigger one. i do defrost it once a year or twice, depending if someone leaves it ajar, which makes it "grow" ice, Grrrrr....

if i had the choice, it would be a pantry or butler's pantry, garage or basement. i wouldn't want it in main kitchen. then it would have "look good" in the kitchen (more $$). i feel most are more utility looking or odd size and i wouldn't want to accommodate it...if that makes sense.

We have a large upright freezer in our attached garage. Also our old SxS fridge. I don't know how helpful this will be but, here goes....

We don't buy much processed food at all so there are no frozen pizzas or such inside. We rarely eat red meat but DH goes fishing in Alaska every summer so we have a freezer full of halibut and salmon in seal-a-meal type freezer bags for two people, marked with the year. Any fish not eaten by the time the next trip comes around is thawed and smoked so we only have one year's catch in the freezer, so no need to rotate or identify further.

We also home-can our own tuna but we usually buy the tuna off the boat and freeze it until winter as we're always busy with other more fun, outdoor pursuits in August when the tuna comes in. So we have a huge tuna in there right now and will probably can it in February as we're almost out of our home-canned.

We also freeze razor clams dug during clamming seasons. It gets eaten fast enough to not worry about marking it. Clams don't last long in this house. :)

We freeze berries in the summer for smoothies, sorbets, etc. Also don't worry too much about identifying the year because we usually use it all up before the next berry season hits.

We keep it organized by having a shelf for salmon, another for halibut, another for clams and other oddities like the rare chicken or beef I might buy on sale. The berries are in freezer zip-locks and then plastic shoe-boxes marked with the type of berry.

We have a fairly small fridge in our kitchen due to space issues so the garage SxS is used to store any overflow of fresh veggies or fruits that need cooling and is usually filled up with pre-prepped dishes before a big holiday gathering or other entertaining. I simply keep a list of what's in the garage fridge on my kitchen fridge so I remember what's in it when I run out of that item in the kitchen fridge and can replenish the kitchen fridge.

I use the freezer section of the garage SxS for freezing things like soups, stocks, frozen veggies from the store, the dog's home-made food, etc., and then will bring it upstairs to the kitchen freezer as needed. These are marked with item name and date. I try to rotate the older items toward the front so they are grabbed first.

Our kitchen freezer is mainly stocked with the frozen smoothie packs (green, fruit) that are ready to pop into the Blend-Tec in the morning for our green smoothie. Also with things like yeast, flax seeds, chia seeds, and the various items like that which we put in our smoothies. We go through this quickly enough to not need to mark it with dates.

The large upright freezer in the basement is the only one that needs occasional thawing about once a year. I usually do this when all the fish and berries are eaten so it's fairly empty. Less stuff to move into coolers while it thaws. Since it's in the garage, I usually use the hose to knock off any bigger chunks of ice and then let it drain, wipe it dry, and reload it.

We fill containers with water to put into the freezer as it empties because freezers need to work harder to stay cold when there are large, empty spaces inside them. Since we don't eat much dairy anymore, we don't have milk containers lying around so I often find myself using coffee cans and such. I wish I had saved more gallon milk jugs to reuse. When the freezer is filed and the water containers aren't needed anymore, we usually let them thaw and use the water in the garden.

Small 5' unit in my pantry. If I ever get up the energy, I will reorganize the pantry shelves and get a 7' chest unit. My parents had 2 large chest units out in the garage. Mom was the organized one and would label everything and set in small boxes or bags by item and date. This made things like ground beef, roasts and steaks easier to find. Veggies from the garden too. We used to do 150 to 300 ears of corn, ocra, squash, tomatoes and beans every summer.

Oh, and to keep track of what's in there, I should keep an ongoing list, but what I actually do is periodical archeological inventory dive into the freezer make a list. The list is more of a nudge in my brain of what's there and what to look for at the store. The paper it's written on ends up in the recycling afte a few days, but the thoughts stay in my brain.

I do have an extra freezer -- right now mine is in the garage, which is a pita to get to. When I move, it will move to the pantry. I have an upright about 4.5 - 5 feet tall. The floor models where you lean over into them are more energy efficient -- but they take more space. And are harder to sift through.

If your garage is close to your kitchen, it's an option (mine isn't - it is down a whole nother level). I also understand if your garage freezes in the winter, the efficiency of your freezer is compromised (I'm not sure I understand how, but I'll take the electrician's word for it). Mine doesn't freeze in the winter now - but my future garage will.

The inventory idea bpathome mentioned is a good idea, and something I plan to implement when I move. Right now I'm eating the freezer down so I can get it ready for moving later this year.

Oh, btw: Since the freezer is so far from my kitchen currently -- I put my favorite foods in that freezer and the less favorite items in the one above my fridge. This guarantees that out of sight doesn't equal out of mind!

In a new build my first choice would be to put an extra freezer in the pantry, laundry, or mudroom (around the corner from the kitchen). If I had a very large kitchen area side by side built in freezers would be nice, too. If that's not possible I would want it close by with at most a few stairs (such as in a bump out in the garage where it won't get in the way of cars). Having it on a different level (such as a basement) would be my last choice; seems like in new construction there would be plenty of ways to get it closer to the kitchen.

Additional thoughts -- you do have to defrost these stand alones occasionally (at least the brands I am aware of). This is actually good -- the temperatures in the stand alones stay more constant, delaying freezer burn.

I also will put Tupperware containers of water in the freezer if it is less than full -- to keep it running more efficiently. This was also useful during some extended power outages -- when I opened the freezer three and a half days later, everything was still frozen except the items at the very top. I didn't have to throw anything out! (Those top items were still cold and could be grilled immediately, and I'd lucked into dry ice for the rest of it...)

We have our old fridge with bottom freezer and an upright freezer in the basement, where we have a mini kitchen set-up. The freezer is from 1970 (it was the freezer from my childhood home!) and runs like a champ. We defrost it probably once a year or so. But it is sort of a black hole. Sometimes things go in there, never to be found again-- well at least for a very long time.

I have no system. I tried and failed. Everyone loads that freezer wherever there is space. Reorganization happens when DH is foraging through it, and I hear all sorts of grumbling and an occasional "Did you know there is chicken in here from 2014??" accompanied by the sound of packages hitting the basement floor.

After baking chicken that was deep in the recesses of the freezer, and getting that delightful freezer-burned taste, I vowed to never again stock the freezer full of meat. If I were as organized as you all, it would be no problem, but I am only kidding myself that I would stay on top of it. We have a brand new grocery store 3 minutes from our house with an incredible meat department. I am buying fresh and will only occasionally freeze meat- mostly ground beef in larger packages that is divvied up and put in double freezer bags and dated. I DO actually put dates on my food. LOL.

With two boys-- er, excuse me-- young men rampaging through our food supply constantly, we do have the need for the extra fridge and freezer. It is nice also for holidays and entertaining.