New Arrival

No no, no baby pictures yet. And while our sweet little girl is indeed a new arrival, she's not the one I'm talking about here today.

Because we've (including both sets of grandparents) been stockpiling food for the first few sleep-deprived weeks, our freezer in the kitchen had become overstuffed. In fact, at one point, the door was just slightly ajar - not even noticeable from looking at it - for the whole work day. Thankfully it was not enough to defrost the contents, but it did make the motor work in overdrive - which is how I realized it was slightly open, from hearing the motor running nonstop when I got home that evening.

And so after much convincing from my mom, we let her get us a deep freezer as a holiday gift. Our concerns up until now had been both the cost of running it and the space needed to put it. First step - find a place for it.

The basement has never been very efficiently arranged, but it worked for our purposes. But with a little redecorating, this:

 Became this (and notice the conveniently located outlet right there beside the door...):

Exactly enough space for a small chest freezer. 7 cubic feet, to be specific. This freezer from Home Depot, to be even more specific.

It's not energy star, but it's not too expensive at least. And we're keeping it in the unheated part of our home where it never gets too warm, even in the summer. So that should help too.

The rest of the basement is still a work in progress. We moved the shelving unit to the other wall and are currently hunting out a few more shelves units to further add some storage space. Stay tuned for another post on that soon. AND we're trying to figure out how best to organize the interior of the freezer. We want to be able to find things quickly and a negative to a chest freezer is having all that space limited to things that can stack (but they are so much more energy efficient than a regular standing freezer). We're thinking probably some boxes from - where else but Ikea. Time to take the baby on a field trip!