Why You Should Defrost Your Freezer To Save Energy
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Looking to chill out and save energy? Here’s a handy tip on why you should defrost your freezer to save energy.
Your freezer is a sustainability superhero when it comes to reducing your food waste. It keeps your meals and ingredients fresh for much longer periods than you could in the fridge.
However, like any superhero, your freezer does need a little maintenance to perform at its best. Defrosting your freezer, for example, helps keep your frozen produce in tip-top condition for longer, but it can also help save you serious amounts of money. In this age of super high energy bills, saving money on our energy bills certainly does help you chill out.
Why It’s Important to Defrost Your Freezer
Wondering why you should defrost your freezer to save energy? Well, it’s a really important thing to do, especially if it’s looking a bit glacier-like in there.
This is because frost buildup in your freezer increases the amount of work your freezer’s motor has to do. If the motor is working harder, then this means it’s using more energy. Keeping it fairly frost-free means savings for the environment and for you.
Not convinced? This Is Money says you can save £100 to £200 a year just by defrosting your freezer. More than a pretty penny!
I know it’s a total pain in the bum to defrost your freezer. We defrosted ours last week. Without the luxury of a second freezer to store the food in, it meant that in the run-up to the big defrost we had to eat everything that was in the freezer to prevent food waste.
During the big defrost we unearthed 40 (yes, 40, thanks to an internet shopping mix-up!) vegetable fingers that we had to eat up. Now I don’t think I can look at another vegetable finger without feeling more than a little nauseous.
It was worth it though. We can get to what we want easily without having to hack off bits of ice (it had got that bad!).
How to Defrost A Freezer
Thankfully, defrosting is a straightforward job, however, you will need to devote a couple of hours to the job.
What You Will Need
To defrost a freezer, you will need a couple of towels to protect your floor. You’ll also need a dish shallow enough to sit under the freezer’s drainage spout that you’ll be prepared to empty frequently, as well as some bowls to sit in your freezer.
What to Do
Empty all the food from your freezer, and remove any freezer drawers.
Switch off your freezer at the wall, and place a bowl of boiled water on each shelf. This helps to speed up the thawing process.
However tempting it may be, do not under any circumstances hack at the ice with a knife, hammer, or any other tool. Instead, have patience and just leave your freezer to defrost on its own, rather than risk puncturing your freezer pipes.
Don’t pour boiling water on your freezer either, as this could cause your freezer pipes to burst.
Once the water is melted, mop up any puddles of water, and clean your fridge with your cleaner of choice. I tend to use my homemade cleaning spray for jobs like this.
Pop your drawers back in, and switch the freezer back on. Voila!
Found this tip useful? Check out my other tip on why you should fill your freezer for maximum energy efficiency.
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Quicker way to defrost your freezer so long as you’re careful is using a hot air gun I can do a frost a 4 shelf freezer with one drawer with an inch of ice build-up on it in about an hour and a half take care thank you
Wow Bill, that’s extreme defrosting!!
Oh it definitely does! I wrote a post about it a little while ago about filling in all the gaps in your freezer: https://moralfibres.co.uk/filling-your-freezer-save-energy/ – we’re on the same energy saving page!
Great tip, I always stuff scrunched newspaper to fill the gaps when it is half full. I am not sure it actually keeps our energy bill down but I like to think it does!