Clothesline in Winter

Clothesline in Winter

Stop Thief! (Your spare fridge is robbing you blind)

Remember those stories about banks and credit card companies that would slip in a charge of a few cents every month, and no one would bother to check it out?  Someone must have gone to jail, right?

Nasty thief in the Elwood's guest room
Well we had one of those – no, two! – in our house.  It seemed so sensible: a second refrigerator is great for the holidays, and for the garden harvest, especially when we have lots of asparagus waiting to be delivered.  In fact, at one point we had FOUR fridges humming along!

But they’ll rob you blind!  Every fridge plugged in costs us about $100-125 per year in electric cost, and generates 0.8-1.0 tons of CO2 emissions.  Catch that?  A TON OF CO2 FOR EVERY FRIDGE!!

And boy!  Was it ever hard to kick the habit!  We meant to scale back for the longest time.  But what were we supposed to do with all the junk we had in the freezer?  Turns out most of it was pretty much junk, especially when compared to the cost of keeping it frozen.  The happy ending is that the Elwoods are now down to one running refrigerator, and it’s an efficient one.  (If yours is more than ten years old, toss it immediately.   You’ll recoup your costs in a couple years, and save major emissions.)