Hello!

Of all your household appliances your fridge/freezer often consumes the most amount of energy in your home.

Your fridge/freezer gobbles up a huge amount of energy and is often home to lots of forgotten leftovers that go off sitting in the fridge for too long.

With that in mind we have compiled 6 ideas that should save you money:

1) Move your fridge away from the wall

Often we make the mistake of pushing our fridge too close to the back wall. By pulling the fridge forward a few centimetres it can help reduce the energy used by the fridge by as much as 40%. Now that’s a big saving.

2) Buy a thermometer and pop it in the fridge

The ideal temperature for your fridge should be 3-5 degrees celsius and the freezer range is -18 to -15 degrees celsius. If the temp is too low it can affect the quality of your food as well as burn extra energy. If the temp is above this range it can also affect the quality of your food.

3) Clean the coils

Dust builds up on the coils at the back of your fridge and so the condenser kicks in more often and has to work harder, using more energy and costing you more money. Pull out the fridge and use your vacuum to clean off the excess dust both on and around the fridge. Make sure you do this regularly!



4) Fill your empty containers with water and put in the freezer

Your freezer works best when it’s  full. Cold items help keep other items cold and maintains a low temperature. Rather than filling your freezer with unnecessary food that you may forget about, get an empty milk container and fill 75% with water and put it in the freezer.

5) Get rid of your leftovers

Do your leftovers get pushed to the back of the fridge and get forgotten until you see mould growing on them?

Here’s a simple way to work out what to get rid of each week.  Have on hand some coloured washable markers and allocate a colour for each day. When adding something to the fridge write on the container with the coloured marker for that day, that way you can categorise food by how long it’s been in the fridge. Sunday night glance in the fridge and look for Monday’s colour and throw it out.

6) Add a ‘leftover veggies’ container to the freezer

Do you often have a few veggies left over at the end of the meal? Rather than throwing them in the bin put them in a small container in your freezer. Once the container is full, boil some water, add some spices, meat of your choice and stock and boil away. You then have a yummy, inexpensive soup – especially great in winter!

Have you got any suggestions to help save energy with your fridge/freezer? SHARE with us in the comments below.

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  • Teach your kids not to open the fridge and just stand there looking inside for minutes on end.

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  • So many good pointers and suggestions here. While i doubt i could be bothered to colour code each day, I would def make the effort to pull the fridge out from the wall a little more and vacuum the coils! Thanks for sharing!

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  • Great tip on moving away from the wall and cleaning the coils. I never think about those things

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  • Very good tips though not sure I would carry out colourful market tip. I also try to ask regarding maintenance for big ticket items as there are things you should know that help a lot with your products life span, and sometimes safety, like cleaning the filters in dryers and air conditioning machines is super important.

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  • I love these ideas…many which i did not realise. I will be filling containers with water in the freezer now!

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  • Excellent tips and pointers, thanks for sharing

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  • I like the idea about using left over vegies and putting them in the freezer then making a soup with them. I never knew you could use vegies like this. Do the vegies need to be raw or cooked before freezing?

    Reply

  • I’ve heard one tip about putting newspaper rolls in the fridge to fill up space. And also deodorising your fridge with a cut lemon or ground coffee beans.

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  • Some handy tips here. I used to have frozen blocks in my freezer, but they took up too much room that I needed for food, so I removed them

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  • Great ideas and I love saving energy with appliances.

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  • Thanks for the tips, great.

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  • The tip of add a leftover vegetables container to the freezer, that’s what I have been doing wrong, I haven’t been doing that. Thank you.

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  • Closing the door slower not so sharply to let less cold air out basically dont open the fridge just to look in it and drink normal tap water not refrigerated to save on opening the fridge frequently

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  • All great ideas! Checking the seal on your fridge freezer every so often is a good idea too. You can do this by placing a piece of paper between the seal when you close the door; if you can pull the paper out without any resistance it’s definitely time to replace your seal!

    Reply

  • Great ideas here, and all so simple really,! I wonder why I hadn’t thought of some myself! I really like the one about making soup from left over veggies! Great idea

    Reply

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