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Your fridge accounts for 8% of your home energy use. That makes it the king of appliances in terms of electricity consumption. Refrigerators are also really expensive, so most of us can't afford to go out and buy a $1,500 dollar fridge so we can save $100 dollars a year in energy costs.
You can, however, make your fridge more energy efficient by simply changing the way you store your food. A well-tended fridge is an energy-efficient one. Here are a few food-storage tips.
1. Keep Your Freezer Full Keeping your freezer full at all times will decrease the amount of power it uses. You don't have to buy food. Just make ice. Put the ice into bags. Use that ice for the next tip.
2. Cool Your Food Before Refrigerating You might plan your meals and cook several dishes at once. That's a good way to cut down on your stove's energy, but if you're putting your meals, all hot and steamy into the fridge or freezer, then you're making the fridge work harder. And the fridge uses more electricity than the stove. In order to have your energy-efficiency cake and eat it too, simply fill a tray full of ice water, dunk the bottom of the hot pan into the water to cool it. Let it cool. Wrap the dish properly and freeze it. Reuse the ice water.
3. Wrap Your Food Properly If you don't wrap your food properly, you'll have condensation problems. This will kill a fridge's efficiency. Wrap your meat and other foods.
4. Keep your Fridge Full You should keep your fridge at least 3/4 full. All the cold items in the fridge will lower the overall temperature. You don't have to go out and buy a bunch of food, instead fill a few pitchers full of water. That way, you won't have to wait for the tap to get cold, and you can save a little water on the side.
5. Labels/Inventory Label your foods so you won't have to spend all the livelong day digging around your freezer and fridge. You can also take inventory and magnet it to the freezer door. Keep that fridge door shut!
