As many of you know, hurricane Irene was a total jerk to our neck of the woods. Not only did it knock trees into nearby homes, cars, poles, and roads, it also took the power out for a nice long time. Three days for us. But that was nothing compared to some other areas of our neighborhood (where it was out for over seven days), and other parts of Richmond (which didn’t get it back for close to two weeks). There was even a contest for the last person to get their power back on a local website.
So yes, three power-less days were annoying, but it could have been waaay worse. The only thing it really ended up affecting was our fridge. Yup, everything spoiled. So we lost every last container of salad dressing and mustard and soy sauce and cream cheese and every other item that you take for granted because you don’t usually buy them all at once (you know, you tend to amass them over time so you’re not met with the harsh reality that you just spent $200 on condiments). Yikes.
So yup, this is a post about the state of our fridge. Because it’s house related and save-a-buck related and just something I wanted to blather on about. I actually get a surprising amount of requests for couponing updates (and you’ll see how those tie in momentarily). The good news is that we didn’t lose everything. There were some items in the fridge that didn’t absolutely need to be cold to survive, like:
- various containers of berries and other fruit
- some veggies
- sandwich wraps
- wheat flatbread
- garlic
- soda
- chocolate
So during our day-three clean out when the power came back on we were able to pull them out alive. But everything else had to go.
The weirdest casualty was a container of biscuits that actually popped open on its own from the lack of refrigeration. It was very Twilight Zone.
Melted ice cream sammies = sad ice-cream loving hubby. Especially because they weren’t just melted, they were curdled and rank. So no amount of refreezing was gonna save them.
But let’s rewind. Before the hurricane we saw a tip on TV about freezing ziplock bags of water so you could transfer them from your freezer to your fridge to keep things colder (much like a giant cooler) to hopefully save food if the power is out for an extended amount of time. Wellllll, that was a bust. We diligently filled five or six ziplock bags with water (leaving enough unfilled space for them to expand, as directed) and placed them in the freezer. We didn’t immediately want to transfer them over when we lost power around 4pm (didn’t want to open the fridge/freezer just yet), so we went to bed in our interior rooms (explained here) while the hurricane continued to loiter over our fair city for another eight hours and decided to make the switch in the morning.
I don’t know what went wrong, but by morning there was a big old wet spot in front of the freezer. You can even see the towel shoved next to the fridge in the picture above. The bags that were supposed to be ice that we could transfer to the fridge had already melted completely and were now leaking out of the fridge and onto the floor. Booo! At least two of them inexplicably punctured themselves or something during the freezing and unfreezing process (although we left lots of room for them to expand when frozen). So looking back, we wish we had never seen that tip since it made for a mess that we wouldn’t have even had to deal with had we skipped it. Oh well, it was worth a try. And it might work better for someone who could transfer them faster (when they were still ice) although I wonder if they would melt and drip out of the fridge side instead of the freezer side in that case. Hmm. Maybe our fridge just doesn’t hold cold air as well as others do, so ice melts quickly and doesn’t really make much of a difference in a power-outage situation.
There was one rescue mission that went on about 15 hours into the blackout though. In order to stop the leaking situation we realized we had to toss open the doors to the freezer and grab those bags of water and toss them into the sink (to keep them from continuing to leak/drip)…
… so although it’s totally not ideal to open any fridge doors without power (keep that cold air in, baby!) we knew we had to get in there for a sec. So we figured while we were at it we should probably quickly reach in to save a few things on the fridge side by packing a cooler and bringing them to Grammy and Tom Tom’s house (where they miraculously never lost power at all, and sweetly offered up half a shelf of their fridge). In hyper-speed, before slamming the doors shut we grabbed:
- 12 organic yogurt cups
- organic whole milk (Clara’s) and organic skim milk (ours)
- a pack o’ cheese sticks
- a package of strawberries and blueberries
- 2 laughing cow cheese wheels
All of those items made sense since Clara eats/drinks them a lot so we would have had to rebuy them right away if we didn’t save them… except for the laughing cow cheese. I have no idea why I panicked and grabbed that. Total auto-pilot grab-the-dairy madness. But at least we saved a few things (which would probably have set us back about $30 if we had to rebuy it all).
So when the power came back on during day three (I heard angels singing) we gave everything a little bit of time to firm back up thanks to the cold and bravely opened the doors. Yuck. It was staaaanky in there. So we held our breath and walked things directly out to the garbage pail outside (which stunk to high heaven until the trash truck came a few days later). But we were able to save the few items that I mentioned in my first little list o’ bullets since they didn’t need cold air to not spoil (we just kept them in the fridge for added lifespan or because we didn’t have a breadbox, etc). But everything else was done-zo. Even the bagged salad was slimy and gross. And the giant tub of yogurt. I can’t talk about that. Scarred for life. Note: after snapping this picture we realized we could compost/recycle some of the stuff in the trash so out it came and into our compost/recycle bins it went (must have been in shock from the smell at first and couldn’t think straight).
It was about this time that we realized just how much stuff we would have to rebuy. Boo.
But John was smart about it. As we tossed things he suggested that we write them down, so we ended up with a shopping list to remind us of all the take-for-granted, perpetually-stocked stuff that we’d probably completely forget to rebuy until we reached for it and didn’t find it (like ketchup, salad dressing, hummus, syrup, butter, etc).
It was handy to see all the stuff that we needed to rebuy but also kind of a buzz kill in that how-much-is-this-gonna-cost-us way. Then I decided it could become a fun little self-imposed coupon challenge since I seem to have hit a plateau with my couponing adventures (I can save around $40-55 on a big shopping trip, but can’t seem to get past that since we buy a lot of produce/organic stuff and refuse to buy stuff just because we have a coupon for it if we don’t actually need it just to see the “you saved X amount” number go higher on the receipt). But I started thinking… maybe all these common household items that we only buy occasionally could be the coupon jackpot?
There are a heckova lot more coupons for ketchup, mayo, and salad dressing than organic ground turkey and kale, so I figured that my challenge would be this: to try to save as much as possible by hunting down coupons for as many of those items as I could. Of course this big coupon idea set me back a few days while John kept saying “we need to go shopping, woman” and I kept saying “give me time to hunt coupons, man” and we just ate stuff from the pantry like pasta and cereal along with the few things we saved by bringing them to Grammy’s house (yogurt, milk, fruit, etc). Sure I had a little stockpile of coupons already laying around from before Irene, but this was before I knew my entire fridge would get wiped out (so none of them were for staples that we already had and later lost).
Then we went to the beach for the weekend so that bought me a bit more time (I reasoned with John that going shopping for a big haul before leaving town for a holiday weekend might not be that smart). But even on our mini beach vacay I bought the Sunday paper and got a few coupon inserts from John’s mom after she clipped her own stuff and went online to all of the coupon sites that I occasionally peruse (you can read more about those here in this initial couponing post from a while back).
When I got back home I printed and clipped to my heart’s content and even digitally loaded my Kroger card with virtual coupons that I could use when they scanned it at the store (more on that here). So when we finally hit The K-rogue (that’s how $herdog says Kroger), I was armed and dangerous coupon-riddled. Note: I have no idea why it took me over a week to get my act together and write this post up. Maybe it’s the same defect that made me inexplicably grab the laughing cow cheese?
Happily, we came home with a ton of stuff (we didn’t even have enough reusable bags for all of it!)…
It actually felt pretty good. The fridge went from almost completely empty to looks-like-normal-full for $257.40. It’s definitely not nothing. And if you watch those pro coupon shows (where they get 1K worth of food for three dollars) it’s downright sad. But we actually expected it to be a lot worse I think. Some of our normal grocery shopping trips can top $200 when we’re running pretty low on stuff (we usually go every two weeks or so, to avoid impulse buys that can add up when you go more frequently). And we were almost starting from zero this time (we had filled almost an entire trash can with spoiled food), so we expected that we’d have to buy a lot more than usual (and spend a lot more than usual too).
The only sad thing. I still only saved $47.51.
Can’t a girl catch a break and save over fifty five bucks for once, K-rogue? Oh well, $47.51 is still money saved. And it definitely would have hurt more to see a total that started with a three at the register (it was originally over $300 but thanks to the coupons it came down near $250). And there’s always next time. At least the fridge is full again and my wraps won’t go hummus-less while my salads go dressing-less. And the fridge itself has never looked cleaner. We scrubbed that baby to the bone when she was empty.
Of course I got a few catalinas at the checkout (not all ones that I’ll actually use, but we’re definitely suckers for yogurt, so…). The cycle continues.
And you know we love a good after picture or two, so behold… the freshly stocked fridge:
All in all, it was a nice little fridge makeover. Now I’m off to call my insurance company because someone mentioned that some of them might reimburse you for food that spoils in natural disasters like hurricanes. That would be pretty nice. Update: just realized our deductible is much higher than $250, so never mind.
Anyone else doing any fridge cleaning or restocking? Or hitting a coupon plateau? Better yet, have you broken through it and ache to tell me your secrets? Please do.
Psst- Check out this initial post all about couponing for specific deets about how I save money/use coupons – and check out a ton of awesome tips in the comment section while you’re at it. I’m totally JV but there are lots of varsity couponers out there.
Psssst- We announced this week’s giveaway winners. Click here to see if you’re one of them.
Caitlin says
Back in 2007 most of eastern Oklahoma lost power during an ice storm. People were counting the outage in weeks and AEP called in crews from across the entire region to help get the power back on. The only redeeming factor of that was that with the temperatures being so low we could set refrigerated items outside so they didn’t spoil. Sorry to hear that you guys got hit by the hurricane.
Hannah says
Helpful hint most insurance company’s will pay you for food lost in a power outage due to a storm ect…. It’s worth checking out
Heather @ The Cozy Cape says
Coupon secret… I know you said you refuse to buy things you don’t use but that’s exactly what you need to do. You match the coupons with the circular store adds to basically get things for free and many times will actually build up a credit from these “purchases”… even if you don’t need it. Because the store won’t give you money back, you use that store balance/credit to purchase non-coupon items such as meat and produce. Then give the food that you bought that you don’t use to a food back. Easy peasy!
YoungHouseLove says
Such a great tip! I love the idea of donating!
xo,
s
Kelly says
Hey guys! I glanced over the comments on your couponing post and didn’t see anyone suggest you look at http://www.livefabuless.com. (forgive me if someone did). Jodi does a great job of finding good deals and posting them on Facebook. She also shares her un-clipping philosophy where she simply saves the weekly inserts as a whole and then only clips what she needs when she needs it. I have started doing this and it takes about 5 minutes to plan my shopping trip! I would not coupon if it was not this easy. Also, have you used ebates? If not look it up at ebates.com. They give you cash back for shopping online if you click through their site. I’ve gotten over $150 back in the past 5 minths (but take into conisderation that I bought a new fridge, dishwasher, and washer/dryer online from Home Depot, Lowes and Sears). When the best price is online anyway, it’s a great way to save even more!
YoungHouseLove says
Great tips one and all! Thanks so much!
xo,
s
Nika says
Not sure if someone has said this but our insurance pays for up to $500 of spoiled food and the deductible doesn’t apply to that situation.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for all the tips everyone! We have it all figured out (put in a claim with our power company, who will most likely cover the $250 spent – and we won’t have to worry about any deductible or potential rate hikes later).
xo,
s
Make and Do Girl says
We unloaded basically our entire fridge too :( It was a real pain rinsing all those jars and bottles to recycle them. BUT, it gave me a great project idea for how to use the jars from my rotten food and the sticks that were all over the Richmond streets and turn them into “Hurricane Irene Hurricanes.” (Candle holders for the next time the power goes out!) I posted the tutorial on my blog: http://makeanddogirl.com/?p=1554
Ashley says
Something I learned last week that you might have already known: The online coupons you load onto your Kroger card from Kroger.com, Cellfire.com, and ShortCuts.com are applied if your products are eligible. You want them to swipe your card first or your printed E-coupons and paper coupons won’t be doubled BUT it may mean that you can’t use some of your paper coupons because some of the coupons on your card have already been applied.
Those coupons on your card are not doubled. So… my new policy will be to only upload coupons on my card that are worth more or equal to anything I have in paper or as a printed E-coupon. Make sense? It’s so confusing and frustrating when you’re trying to hand the cashier a high value coupon and it doesn’t ring up.
Someone at the Hull Street Kroger by Brandermill finally took the time to explain this to me.
YoungHouseLove says
Ooh yes, makes lots of sense! I always ask them to swipe my card last but they said the computer prompts them to swipe the card before paper coupons, which kind of flustered me!
xo,
s
Pat says
Sherry,
Next time the power goes out(but there’s not going to be a next time for power outages in Bon Air, right?) try plastic refrigerator containers or milk jugs and freeze water in those instead of the bags. They don’t leak, and I speak from the combined experience of Isabel (7 days without power) and Irene (6 days powerless) that a freezer packed to the ceiling with ice frozen in containers will keep the food that’s in it from spoiling. I have a chest freezer that’s left over from when we were a family of four (it’s just me, now) and when I first saw the projected path of Irene, I began freezing jugs of water and emptying my icemaker ice into plastic bags. I lost some food, but managed to save most of it.
Pat
YoungHouseLove says
So smart!
xo
s
orangesugar says
We were without power for 3 days and I had to pretty much throw away everything in the fridge too. Our freezer is still pretty bare.
Jennifer S. says
You guys only go to the grocery store every two weeks?! Do you plan your dinners/menus that far in advance? I would LOVE to be that organized :)
YoungHouseLove says
We do one quick under $30 refill trip for produce and milk just to tide us over. So if we forget anything we grab it about a week later (but we definitely stick to the under $30 rule so we don’t go crazy on snacks and stuff – especially if we’re shopping hungry…). We usually eat a bunch of “staple” meals (spaghetti, frozen or homemade pizza, veggie burgers, veggie dumplings, chicken or eggplant parm, etc) so we grab that stuff so we know we have a bunch of dinner stuff on hand and John usually looks up a few recipes and shops for those things (so that earns us a few more planned dinners throughout the week).
xo,
s
Cylie says
I don’t know if you have a Harris Teeter around, but I do most of my shopping there. They double coupons up to $1.00 and they always run great deals. They also have a lot of gluten free and organic products. I am learning to coupon and there have been several times I have bought around $120 worth of groceries and paid less than $70 for it. And that’s just with newspaper coupons. Also a lot of stores will give you extra special prices if you’re a member. I know Teeter does :)
A great website to check is southernsavers.com!!! You can pick your store and she lists all the products that are on sale for that week and if there is a coupon out for it. Then she’ll let you know how much it will end up costing for that product. You can click the items you want and then print it for a shopping list. It’s pretty amazing. It has been a great help in couponing! It is a little confusing at first but stick with it!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for suggestions! No Harris Teeters around here sadly. :(
-John
Shannon Cait says
Curious – why didn’t you try to put things in an ice chest to save them???? Seems like that would have worked for a few days at least!
YoungHouseLove says
Didn’t have one!
xo,
s
Meagan says
Thanks so much for the look into your fridge! I’m recently married and my husband and I are learning to cook and are really trying to work on our not-so-healthy, too-much-fast-food-because-we-stink-at-cooking diet. We are looking forward to having children in the future and really want to be in a good place before we do. And by reading your baby center post, I think Clara has eaten foods I’ve never even heard of! Way off topic of decorating but I would love to hear any tips or advice you have for keeping a healthy/natural diet for you and your family or what typical meals are like in your house or if you have any go-to sources for recipes. Thanks!
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, I think a few favorites of ours are homemade pizza, veggie dumplings, bean and brown rice burritos, eggplant or chicken parm, wheat spaghetti with turkey meat sauce, etc. We also try to have salad and fruit as much as we can. But sometimes there’s ice cream too. Haha.
xo,
s
Kelly says
Hey guys. I was just reading my homeowners insurance policy, and I was surprised to see that it will pay us up to $500 to replace food that goes bad in fridges/freezers due to a power outage. Maybe your insurance has a provision like that.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the info! We actually put in a request for repayment from our electric company (we love that we won’t have to worry if our insurance premiums went up next year for making a claim this year)!
xo,
s
Pamela says
After Irene we were also without power for 3 days and lost just about all of the contents of our fridge/freezer. We made a note of everything and our flood insurance company asked us to estimate the replacement cost. We came up with $200. I think we underestimated by about $50, after reading this post!
ABC says
We were without power a few times this past spring – one time for 4 days and once for 2 1/2 days. We never lost anything in our frig/freezer. Maybe the fact that it was spring and much cooler made the difference, certainly the temps were much higher when you got hit. But it made me wonder what, if anything, consumers can do to check on the “tightness” of their frig? You know, how well does it keep the cold air in?
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, I’m not sure. Anyone know of anything? Maybe try googling around – maybe there’s some test you can run at home?
xo,
s
Lena says
I’m on a mini YHL marathon this week. Work has been REALLY slow and although I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be spending my “spare-time” reading your blog, I just can’t help myself. Long story, but I still don’t have internet set up at home so this is the only place I can get on. (and although I can read your plog I can’t play any videos :-( boo)
All that aside, I finally just got to finishing reading this post on all of the shopping you had to do! And while normally I love to read a lot of the comments that people leave, I’ve been reading through your old posts for 4 hours now and my eyes are starting to blur. So I’ll just ask the question that I’m sure at least one of the 606 comments already addressed…
How much whipped cream do you guys eat?! lol My husband and I bought ONE can (it was chocolate…and um, not for food this time lol) and that thing has been in the fridge for 3 months. I can’t imagine buying two. You guys must like a lot of ice cream :-)
That’s all. I love the blog and when I can watch some of the videos I’m sure I’ll be commenting on them too.
Hope you’re having a great weekend.
(I also learned in this YHL extravaganza that John was a band geek like me! I played clarinet from 4th grade to 12th, and was in marching band. Though I did try to “de-nerd” my self by being in the color guard too…yeah, their even worse lol)
Lena says
…I meant your *blog* not your *plog* LOL
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- that was all John! They had a two for one deal going and he has ice cream with whipped cream on it every night. Of course I look on jealously while I sip my tea. That man can eat!
xo,
s
Lena says
Haha yeah it’s not fair is it? My husband and I have been on a really healthy, lower carb diet to try and lose some post wedding weight…he comes to me yesterday and says “I think I need to start adding more carbs, I’m losing weight too fast” I just stared at him lol
Kelly says
Freeze empty gallon jugs , plastic orange juice bottles or those big
gallon Ice tea containers w/ handle , they work much better.
Can also transfer food to large Ice chest & use frozen containers to keep food cold and buy ( ahead of time ) bags of Ice & can use for drinks.
I live in New Orleans so this is , unfortunately , learned at a young age around here !