Our New Freezer

When we moved in we put our savings towards one kitchen appliance and my in-laws purchased the other. I think the way it worked out was that they bought our cooker and we bought the fridge-freezer. Now, I call it a fridge-freezer, but really it’s a fridge with a little icebox at the top. It suited us fine though and it was just what we needed to get us set up.

Last year when we’d saved up some more funds for another appliance we decided that the most pressing was a washing machine. Although it wasn’t too costly to use the local laundromat, and my in-laws let us use their laundry facilities, it was just inconvenient to have to take our laundry out of the house to be washed. If you spill soup down your favourite pair of jeans, it’s so much easier to just toss them in the machine on a quick wash with whatever’s to hand, rather than having to scrape together enough of a load to make it worth a trip to the Laundorama.

A bigger freezer just wasn’t top of our list of priorities. Until recently.

We’ve started trying to go longer between our trips shopping on the mainland. Both Mr Click’s parents have regular hospital appointments but it’s not always practical to use that time to do a big shopping trip. They’ve been very good about letting us put stuff in their freezer when we’ve not got room in ours (our icebox comfortably holds a packet of mince, some frozen mixed veg and approximately one other item) but it’s like the jeans scenario when you realise that what you want for dinner more than anything else in the world is sausage, egg and chips, but the sausages are in someone else’s house!

We started setting aside money for a chest freezer, planning on getting it around March time this year. Then there was a sale on at the electrical store where we’ve gotten all of our other white goods, and we thought ‘what the hell’ and went ahead with it a little earlier than we’d planned. It’s actually turned out to be just at the right time because of our aforementioned shopping trip, allowing us to stock it up from the start.

Chest freezer (labrador included for scale)

We ended up going for something a little bit bigger than I’d originally planned. The thing is huge. It’s like a back-to-front TARDIS though because with all the insulation stuff it’s actually not quite as large inside as it looks when you first see it. All the same, through careful measurements, I have discovered that I could quite comfortably sit in it (though I’d rather not when it’s switched on). It’s got a little shelf in it and a basket as well which’ll help to keep everything organised too.

I’m really pleased with it. Not only is it giving me somewhere to put laundry as I sort it (which is in full view of the TV so last week I was able to continue watching Lord of the Rings special features while I folded clothes), but it’s going to mean we can have more variety and choice in our meals, not to mention the money we’ll save when there are special offers on that in the past we just didn’t have the space for. On previous shopping trips we’ve only been able to get two different meats (usually mince and a chicken, or some sort of joint) so we’ve got a meat to have fresh and one to freeze, now we can get what we like, bung it in the freezer and have it whenever the mood takes us.

Stocked up

I think that at some point in the future we’ll get a slow cooker as well, which’ll be really handy for the winter when all we feel like eating is stew and casserole and soup. It makes me a little bit sad that there’s nothing left to get from Glenn’s (where we’ve bought all the other kitchen stuff), hopefully the TV will keep going for a while yet so we won’t need to pay them another visit too soon. They’re so nice and helpful there; each time we’ve been they’ve helped us find exactly what we need. They were pretty impressed at how we’ve furnished our kitchen gradually and I love the fact that they’re local so we can go in, say we want a washing machine and within a couple of hours it’s in our back lobby all connected and ready to go.

I can’t help but this is what being grown up feels like. I always used to wonder when I was younger when I would feel like an adult. I think that feeling this excited and happy about buying furniture and electrical equipment is probably a fairly good sign that I’ve hit adult status.