Well, that was ugly.....

On Thursday night, Rick went downstairs to the upright freezer to get a container of applesauce out for his lunch. He thought he closed the door, but......

This morning I went down to the freezer to get pork chops out for dinner tonight and some food was thawed. We ended up throwing out all the broccoli, the shredded squash, green beans, roasted tomatoes, pretty much all the vegetables we had frozen last summer/fall. There were applesauce containers that were still cold, so we kept those, gave some of them to my sister. There were some packages of meat that I didn't trust to use, even though they were still cold and we threw them out. Thankfully, most of them were still well-frozen and I simply repackaged them and put them in the chest freezer. The containers of soup are tossed, even thought they don't seem to be thawed.

I'm making several pans of applesauce brownies this afternoon, some for work, some for my sister and BIL, some for us. I am bbq-ing chicken thighs and legs on Wednesday afternoon; the packages aren't thawed, but I'm leery of them anyway. I put them in the fridge and will get the ingredients I need for Jack's BBQ Chicken for the Oven. Once they're done, I can put them back in the freezer and we'll use them for Memorial Day holiday dinner. I don't even want to let them go til Wednesday, but I simply don't have time to do it before then. I'll probably be off work on Wednesday anyway, so it will work out. They're still frozen.

Meanwhile, we turned off the upright freezer and will let everything thaw out. I'll give the freezer a good cleaning, then turn it back on. Once it's cold again, we'll put the stuff from the chest freezer back into the upright. And at that point, I'm going to clean the chest freezer out then, too. Once that's done, then I'll clean out the freezer in the kitchen. So I'll be able to get all the freezers cleaned out within the next week or so, but I didn't want to have to do it this way. It's a waste of food, but well, thankfully, we didn't lose a lot. We've been eating from the freezers for quite a while now.....it could have been a lot worse. As it is, the chest freezer is completely filled; I can't put one more item in that freezer.

(And I'm glad Rick did it instead of me!   )

That sounds like a lot of work along with lost food.  I did that once with the freezer on top  of the refrigerator.  I am a general air head though.  I have found the ice cream container in the refrigerator instead of the freezer more than once.

That happened to us once. We cooked shrimp and invited everyone we knew. I thought my brother in law was going to explode and make a mess to clean up. He said it is the only time he ever really got enough shrimp to eat. :lol3:

For $2.00 a year we added freezer loss coverage to our Homeowner's Insurance.

Oh geez, that suck's. Glad you didn't lose everything though.

Oh no!  My Mom and Step-dad lost everything in theirs when the circuit got tripped last summer sometime.  My kids were confused that there were no ice cream treats for them.    It happens!

We tend to loose electricity here if it is windy, has rain or pretty much anything else than fair weather, so one autumn there was bit of storm, lost electricity for two days and everything in freezer were lost.

My freezer is also such, that it tends to put frost on top of the unit, that is outer surface of freezer, so it does not hold cold too well, I have to keep it at max setting.

I'm glad you were able to salvage at least some of it!

This happened to us once. Aaron accidentally unplugged our freezer and we didn't notice for over a week.

That happened to me once. The upright freezer was kept in the cellar. I went down there once a week to do laundry and take out what I needed from the freezer. 

One day I smelt something horrible. Looked all around and discovered that the freezer was unplugged. I had wanted to unplug something else and did the freezer by mistake...

It was during the summer and the smell was ungodly....

Smelled like something died. 

I had to dump all the food, washed out the freezer, put newspaper, charcoal, vinegar, baking soda, anything I could think of to get ride of the smell..

In the end, I had to duct tape the edges of the shut door and get rid of that thing.....it was a shame.. a good freezer, not all that old...

I feel for you!

When I moved into the building I'm living in I was in a different apartment than I am now.  I have a chest freezer and placed it where it was going to live, by a wall outlet.  It was working fine for weeks or months.

I had a friend over for dinner and she went into the freezer to get some ice cream for dessert, only to find that my entire freezer was 100% defrosted and warm.  Everything inside was ruined and had to be thrown out.

The previous week I had done a stock up shopping for meats, fish, chicken  and vegetables. I had gone to a farmer's market and purchased fruits and froze those. I made soup and made frozen meals.  In all I estimate that I lost between $800 and $1,000 worth of food, and the time spent cooking it.

I called the company for the freezer because my freezer was only 3 or 4 years old and the compressor was still under warranty.  They came and found that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the freezer. The problem was the wall outlet.  It wasn't holding the plug prongs tight and it was causing the circuit to cut in and out, so my freezer was thawing and freezing and thawing and freezing, and finally it just thawed!

I complained to the rental agency and asked them for a cheque for what I lost in food.  They refused. I told them that it wasn't my fault and I shouldn't have to pay my insurance deductible to cover losses due to a faulty wall outlet in their building that should have been fixed before I had moved into the apartment.

I ended up going to the rental bureau and filed a complaint.   The agency gave me a cheque for $600. It didn't cover everything I lost, but at least it covered some of it.

In December last year I was defrosting my freezer. I have everything stored in reusable canvass shopping bags so I can easily find things by taking out bags and looking in them rather than having to dig around in the freezer.

I forgot to put a bag back in. It contained all of my chicken and miscellaneous meats like lamb (so expensive!) and oxtails etc.   It was only over night, but by the time I realized the bag had been out for about 17 hours.   I threw it all out.   The cost to replace the chicken alone was $140.00 because it was mostly boneless/skinless chicken breasts, and 3 whole chickens that I had cut up and froze and the lamb was $25 for 4 chops.

I now make sure that I check and double check after I've been in the freezer.