We've been meaning to do it for months, and today we finally did it.
We have an upright freezer in the kitchen which is always rammed. I will try and learn to not fill it up so much, eventually. Generally, most of the contents are well rotated, because I keep stuff we actually use in it. It's also home to the cats' raw food (they have a whole drawer), and we have a whole drawer for "ready meals" which are from my habit of cooking in bulk and freezing.
In the summerhouse, we have a fridge freezer. The freezer part was originally going to be for ice cubes, drinks, ice creams, froozen fruit for drinks, and other summer stuff.... but it's ended up being storage.
The chest freezer is smallish (not the smallest size), and was designed for cuts of meat, potato products, and a stash of frozen vegetables. It's not a frost free freezer, which means the food keeps better in it. The stuff in here is stored in bags of similar products, so it's easy to hoik out and put back in when searching the depths. It was this one which needed inventorying.
We did a quick check of the upright freezer first, and pulled a few bits out to bring into the house. Then, as I emptied the freezer, we moved a few things intot the upright. And more things into the bag to come into the house.
In fact, it wasn't too bad, nowhere near as bad I was expecting. The bags idea had worked brilliantly.
We'd had half a sheep, and this joint was earmarked for a big family get together which never took place. We looked at it, looked at each other, and came to the same conclusion. It had to be eaten. So, that’s on the side defrosting, and we'll aim to cook it on Friday. We can freeze some for an impromptu mutton roast, as long as it tastes good.
While the freezer was empty, I decided to scrape it down, using a Scrapr and a jug. It didn't take long, it wasn't nearly as frozen up as I expected. One of the advantages of having a full freezer is that ice is less likely to form.
I then started to put stuff back.
The medlars, which are waiting for me to have the energy to make medlar jelly, went at the bottom. Then 2 joints of pork which we might turn into sausages, and a stack of pork bellies, went in. A bag of chicken quarters (our own chooks); and then the smaller stuff. The small bag which contained our sausages, another one with some pork mince, and another one with some mutton mince. Then a large bag containing "potato products" (sweet potato fries, one huge bag of french fries, some waffle fries, some hash browns, and some croquettes). Underneath the basket went the ice cream products. And finally, the spillover frozen vegetables went on top (they have their own drawer in the upright freezer, which was packed).
And it was done.
There is space at the top, which I am resisting filling. I'm planning a big batch cooking session, and I'll need to rearrange the freezer in the house to fit everything in, which means some
things may get sent to the chest freezer. Once that's done, I'll think about what would be helpful to stock up on.
