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What's up, my friends? Welcome back to Penta Preparedness. Today, we are working on the freezers
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In my garage, I have three of them because I'm, I don't know, crazy, but also because I like to store food
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And we've done animals before. We usually have a lot of protein, but we also usually have a lot of frozen vegetables
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Our favorite way to store vegetables, rather than, like, canned vegetables, you lose a lot of flavor and kind of nutrients that way
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Frozen is second best compared to just eating them fresh. frozen food is something that we like to do. It also allows us to have a lot more stuff on hand
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that a lot of people don't realize they can store like milk. I don't store a lot of the shelf
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stable milk. I prefer to store regular milk and I put it in the freezer. So, freezers are a big
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thing for us. But to keep them working efficiently throughout the year, we need to make sure that
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we defrost them and clean them pretty well at least once a year. That's my preference at least
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And if you do it that often, it's never going to get really bad. We sometimes see freezers that are awful
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They get so bad that you basically can't even get a good seal
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because you'll get buildup all in here and on the door, all right up there
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And then you try to close it and it feels kind of closed, but really there's a gap
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And all of a sudden it's not working very efficiently. You're going to get even more ice build up that way
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because as you get warm air coming in, that's where the ice is going to build up
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So that's why we're doing it. But there's another few things that happen when you get ice filled up. Not only does the door not seal very well, but it makes your freezer
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work less efficiently. I have a little kind of drain thing in the back, in the bottom back of the
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freezer that over time gets filled up with accumulated ice. But it gets so bad that eventually the
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freezers are overworked. And I've had these to where they're like popping the breaker every couple of
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days. What did I need to do? Just defrost the freezers and they all work fantastic again
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Another one is that the more you get that buildup of that ice it actually going to freezer burn your food make your food probably go bad a lot faster but also another thing that builds up in ice is all the smells of all the different things in the freezer which can make your food it can like leach flavor into your food
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It's just a really nice way to get them good and clean and working the best. So we're doing it, and we're doing it now
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The reason we're doing it now is it's currently springtime. Today, the high is only 55 degrees Fahrenheit
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It's warm enough that the freezers will actually defrost. If I did this in the middle of the winter, they actually might not
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But it's also not so warm that these freezers are being overworked yet
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The other thing is, it's going to allow the food that I pull out to not defrost too fast
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Taking food that's frozen, thawing it, and then refreezing it. It's always going to make its quality go down
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A lot of times people are just going to end up losing that food. We're going to start by taking all the food out
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Also, what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to defrost two of these at once
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That gives me a little bit of room in the third one that I could put some stuff into
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if I run out of space in the cooler. I think that's it. Let's get to work
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All right. Well, the freezer is. like a little more than half empty, but we basically maxed out our cooler. So evidently, this
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cooler is smaller than my freezer. So we're not going to be able to empty two of these at a time
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but what we will do is we can close this one up and everything that's left in this freezer
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I'm just going to space between the other two freezers and we'll just do one of these at a time
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and it'll take a little longer than I planned. All right, so like looking at this freezer, it looks pretty okay. I mean, I could do a little cleaning for sure, but but look at how much this ice is built up. I can't
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even pull this cage out and I have literally a chicken breast frozen in there. This is actually
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going to cause me problems when it comes to the efficiency of my freezer. So I definitely want
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to get this out. And if I can solve this problem, it's going to prevent all the huge buildup
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that could happen in a matter of just a few months if I don't take care of this now. All right, well
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that's going to make this thawing pretty easy. I still think I want to let that thaw a little bit
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because I think there's probably ice buildup in some of the mechanism back behind
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So it gonna be good to let that thaw All right we got it thawed out There was definitely some water or some ice back in there inside because the puddle in the bottom is definitely bigger than it should have been based on how much ice was left
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after we pulled out that huge block. But before I do that, I want to take this opportunity
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to clean it out and actually disinfect it. So there is the opportunity with a lot of freezers here
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I can just take these out. And I could go wash them in a dishwasher. It does make it a little easier, by the way
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to clean them if I slide these out. even just if I'm going to use a rag, because I can kind of wipe this
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So I'll show you this example. I'm just using 409. We use a few different ones here at the house
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Some people hate any sort of chemicals. Use whatever you like to use for disinfecting
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This was the dirtiest one. It had something, whatever this orange stuff is
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Could be cheese, but it seems a little wet for cheese. Wow, that's so gross
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So now that shelf is done. So I'm going to go through and wipe that out. I also got a little towel so I can soak up water in the bottom
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All right, I got the freezer cleaned and turned back on a little while ago. So now it's back down to temperature
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I turned all the way to the coldest because, frankly, I want my food to freeze as quickly as possible
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That's going to help keep it as fresh as it can be. It's probably a lot colder than it's required, but I like to keep it as cold as possible
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So with the freezer totally empty, it says it's like minus 20 Fahrenheit. Anyway, it's now it's time to start packing the food back in
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and I want to share just a few thoughts about the organization. Now, I would love to hear from you in the comments how you organized your food in the freezer
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how much freezing you do, just in general, what you think about freezing food. But a few thoughts I have
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I like to keep it really organized. That's because if I lose something in the freezer, I forget that it's there
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Basically, it's practically wasted food. That is one of the benefits, by the way, of going through your freezer to defrost it
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I did find a couple things in there that I'd forgotten were there. But fortunately they still not that old and they still not super freezer burn So I think I be okay So I like to keep them organized We have mostly meat in the bottom half of this freezer veggies and fruit in the top half of this freezer That includes jams and stuff
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And just a couple other things. We just got strawberries for $5 a flat
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It was crazy how cheap they were. So we bought a bunch. We have a ton of strawberry jam right now
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We're putting it in the freezer. So that's where we're headed. This freezer is mostly dairy
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We've got ice cream. We've got butter. We've got milk. And then this freezer is mostly just other frozen foods and leftovers
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That's the way I keep it organized. I also try to do it as much as I can first in, first out
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So we've only got like one bag of chicken breast that's open at a time. But next to it there's another bag that I keep sealed until the first one's empty, and I just kind of go in order
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We have milk in this one and typically that top section is just milk, and I can fit eight of them, eight gallons
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The back row is always where we put new milk when we buy it. So I just slide these ones forward, put one around back, and it's always kind of a first in first out system
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Anyway, we're going to get at it. We're going to fill this freezer back up, and in just a few minutes, we'll have one of these totally done
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extra stuff in there because as you can now see, this freezer is now empty. And I had to make
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plenty of room so that all the ice cream that was in here wouldn't get soft in the cooler
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because refrozen ice cream especially really sucks. So this freezer is empty. It's turned off
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I'm going to let it thaw now. And then we'll get it wiped out and put it all back and I'll
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do the third freezer. But fortunately for you, I'm not going to make you watch that. We'll just
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be back with another video next week. We'll see you there