As a child, I often stood in awe of the large chest freezer my mom kept in our laundry room.
It seemed enormous. And I wondered, what exactly did she have in there? I just never quite understood her love for that freezer.
Later, as a young 20-something getting ready to buy my first house, a chest freezer didn't make the list of necessary appliances that I budgeted for.
Strangely, though, the first time I toured the little ranch house with a "For Sale" sign in the front yard, the one that would be my home for the next decade, I was surprised to see that the owners also had a large chest freezer.
Incredibly, it was kept in one of the bedrooms. What did these freezer-keepers know that I didn't?
Well, it took me a few years to figure it out, but I've since joined the deep-freeze club. I love my chest freezer.
As I became more skilled at Super-Couponing and stockpiling, I quickly realized that freezer space was key to stocking up and beating the pricing cycle on meats and frozen foods -- items not easily stored in a pantry.
In a past column, a reader asked about saving on meats. While it's true that there aren't many coupons for meats (though they do exist), you can win the pricing game on meats by being attentive to price-cycle lows, just as we are with all other grocery items.
Meat prices range from extremely low to extremely high, so the trick is to learn to recognize the best prices in your area for the types of meats that you buy. When the price hits its low, buy as much as you can and store the stockpile in your freezer.
Even without coupons, buying meats when prices are low ensures that we never pay more than we have to.
My pricing benchmark for meats is $1.99 per pound or less. When meat prices cycle at or below that level, whether it's beef, poultry, pork or seafood, it's a buy in my book.
At that point, I purchase as much as I can reasonably store in the freezer, taking into consideration what our household will consume over the next several weeks.
Any time a store has a great sale on meats, I'm not afraid to stock up. Recently, a local store had a great special on pork chops: 99 cents per pound. Pork chops usually sell for $2.49 a pound at this store, so this was definitely a buy, considering that they were less than half price.
Guess what? I bought 20 pounds of pork chops that week. While that was a lot of meat to bring home at once, those pork chops went into my freezer. We'll eat pork chops for months, and every time we do, I will happily recall the total price: just $19.80.
In my Super-Couponing classes, people often ask how I plan meals at our house. Many people think it's best to plan meals around items that are on sale during a particular week. But I can plan meals around what I have stored in the pantry and the freezer since all of that food was purchased at the lowest possible prices.
Grocery stores have sales every week -- even on meats -- but they're not always the rock-bottom prices that Super-Couponers watch for. And I guarantee that with what's already in my house, I can make just about any meal my family might request for dinner.
At 5.2 cubic feet, my chest freezer is about the size of a washer or dryer. It offers plenty of space for meats, frozen vegetables, ice cream and other frozen foods I buy at low prices.
Today's freezers consume far less energy than their decades-old counterparts. My freezer's documentation estimates it costs $34 annually to operate -- that's just $2.83 a month to keep lots of inexpensive groceries nice and cold.
If space is at a premium in your home, it's possible to keep a freestanding freezer in the garage or even in a well-ventilated closet.
Or, consider my cousin's strategy: He lives in a one-bedroom condominium where space is at a premium. After he learned to Super-Coupon and started getting great deals on lots of products, he decided he couldn't live without a freezer.
And so, his chest freezer sits in the center of his living room, semi-disguised as a table.
* Jill Cataldo is a coupon-workshop instructor and writer. Visit www.super-couponing.com or e-mail her at jill@ctwfeatures.com.
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