How to use your freezer to save Money

These days everyone is looking for ways to save money. What if I told you that you’re freezer is a tool that can be used to save you some extra cash? Saving money in the kitchen is an excellent way to cut your budget.

It seems like every year we are hit with more and more inflation. Our money seems to lose value every year, and everything is becoming more and more expensive. I don’t like to be a negative Nelly, but it’s downright depressing.

It’s enough to make your heart race every time you go to the grocery store. Especially in the meat aisle, am I right?

We don’t have control over how much our money is worth, or if expenses will rise. But we do have control over finding little ways to save more money. And the freezer can be used to do that.

We actually have two freezers, plus the freezer that is part of our fridge. However, I’m cautious to use all the freezers. It’s easy to fill your freezers and lose food deep in the depths of that icebox. By the time you find it the food may be freezer burnt and then it will be wasted.

So, we don’t always have all our freezers plugged in and in use. Often we have them all in use if we’ve invested in butchering our own livestock and we have one freezer full of beef and one full of pork. But when the stock gets down I’ll amalgamate what is in the freezer into one.

This allows us to save on energy costs.

We were able to buy our chest freezers secondhand. I definitely recommend this as freezers aren’t cheap but people tend to sell them for low prices.

How to use your Freezer to cut Food Costs

Store extra baked goods

If your house is like mine than you might have kids who eat, and eat, and eat. And kids sure seem to prefer snacks over meal time. Prepackaged and store-bought snacks can be costly.

You can bake things like muffins, cookies, brownies, and cakes and store them in your freezer to pull out when everyone wants a treat.

It’s also a great way to have something in the freezer you can pull out when company shows up at your door.

Freeze home grown vegetables

You can grow your own vegetables like peas, carrots, zucchini, and corn and freeze them to enjoy all winter long. You can skip the frozen vegetable section at the grocery store because you’ll already have your freezer stocked up!

Purchase half a cow or pig in bulk

Often buying a half a cow or a pig through a local farmer can save you some money. It can be cheaper than buying the meat in a grocery store. However, you can only purchase meat this way if you have the space to store it, so this is how having a freezer can save you some cash.

Storing leftovers

I know, ideally your family will eat the leftovers that are in the fridge the next day. But in my house the leftovers are often ignored. That’s where the freezer saves the day. Many leftovers can be stored in the freezer for another night. We often do this with pulled pork or chili.

Freezing batch cooking

It takes pretty much the same energy to make two of the same meal instead of one. Next time you are making soup or stew, intentionally make enough for two or three meals and freeze the rest!

Buy extra sale items

If something is on sale that you can safely freeze, buy extra and store it in your freezer. I love to buy bananas this way. You often can find aging bananas for a discount at grocery stores and I like to peel them, put them all on a big pan, and flash freeze them.

I will store them in a big freezer bag and grab one out when I need to make a smoothie, or I’ll use them for banana bread.

Make your own homemade broth

Homemade broth is so easy to make and you can simmer huge batches of the stuff to freeze (once cooled, of course.) So much better than store bought, and cheaper!

Avoid takeout

If you are a tired mom like me you’ll know how easy it is to decide to not make dinner that night and instead pick up some takeout or go through the drive thru.

Of course, that adds up quickly. You can avoid this by storing some frozen pizza in your freezer. It’s just as easy to cook a frozen pizza than it is to stop at a store and take the extra time to get takeout. The bonus is that you can do this with homemade pizza or store bought.

Prepare for the holidays

Holidays like Christmas are always a busy season. It’s easy to decide to pick up pre-made cookies and desserts because you are just too tired to do your holiday baking at the height of Christmas.

But with your freezer you can bake well in advance (months if you want!) and store them in the freezer so they are ready and available at just the right time.

Money-Saving Benefits of a Freezer

So, as you can see, there are so many ways a freezer can save you money. Consider finding a second-hand chest freezer if you don’t have one, but even if you only have the freezer attached to your fridge, it can still be useful and save you some cash.

Every little bit helps with saving money and while it may not look like big savings at the beginning, using your freezer for many of these options on the list can snowball into a decent amount of money saved each month.

Many of our expenses are fixed, but food is an expense that we do have SOME control over. We may not be able to buy groceries as cheap as we once did, but we can still find ways to save in that area. The freezer is the tool that will help you do that.