Sorry to hear about the the fridge and wish you luck with the replacement. Does North Carolina have a lemon law for appliances? If not, then, hopefully, the E-Lux warranty will get you replacement. In case you go back to considering an upright freezer, I can give you my experience on electrical cost increase from going from a s small chest freezer to a larger self-defrosting upright. I replaced a 5 cu. ft. Whirlpool manual-defrost chest freezer with a 14 cu. ft. Frigidaire FFU14 upright (very similar to the Lowe's version you are considering). With a Kill-a-Watt meter, I figured out that my old chest freezer used around 270 kWh per year while the new upright has been using about 440 kWh. I figure the net extra cost per year for me has run a little under $20 per year. So, not much extra utility cost. Of course, power consumption is partly a function of how full the freezer is and where you keep it. Mine is in the basement which holds a pretty steady at around 60F over the year. Placed the freezer in a garage that is hot for five or six months of the year, and keep it only half full, your cost could be a few dollars higher. One thing about my FFU14 is that it's compressor and fans run frequently and make a fair amount of fan and motor noise. THe Energy Star implementation is abasically to use smaller fans and motors which use less power even though they run more frequently. Trouble is, those smaller components can be annoyingly noisy, at least on the Frigidaire version that I have. This probably will not be a problem with the freezer out in the garage in your case, but it is a problem for me with the freezer in my basement. Chest freezers are a good deal quieter,

As long as you cook it well, I would think it was fine. Linda C

I feel your pain. It feels awful to waste things. That feeling, combined with the overall work of the process really makes cleaning the fridge/freezer a terrible event for me! I save leftovers, and never finish them. Right now, my fridge is so full, I can barely get the door shut. I'm sure much of it is produce that is passed its prime from my juicing craze. I do seem to eat the meat usually! Never finish pasta. In the freezer, I have four different kinds of ice cream, all half finished. 2 freezer burned, but I keep them anyway. Why? I did throw away the Blue Bunny Cinnamon Roll ice cream a few weeks ago... I didn't like it from the start... why it spent three months in the freezer instead of going straight in the trash is beyond me. I threw away some green cheese... maybe it was cheddar! Cleaning the fridge/freezer is always a dreaded adventure. It does feel good to get everything organized and the shelves wiped down. Sometimes, I even take the crisper drawer to the bath tub and wash it out. Right before the sludge in the bottom comes to life. I had an ex that used to use cottage cheese, sour cream, and margarine tubs to store the leftovers in. He had huge house, many cars, and a salary to match, but refused to buy real plastic ware! Finding the *real* item was always a trying event. I remember one time, I went for the sour cream. I opened green bean cassarole that his mom had made 2 Thanksgivings ago, stir fry from who knows when, and something fuzzy that I thought was a pet before I found the sour cream. Even worse, one time I went straight from his house to work. We had spaghetti the night before, and I wanted to take some in for lunch. He gave me his nicest china to take it in... an old I Can't Believe It's Not Butter tub that had been washed so many times most of the writing was gone. Didn't even have a matching lid... he gave me the lid to a old sherbert tub! That's not the funny part... when we talked on the phone that night, he actually asked me to wash the "dish" and bring it back to him. I'd already thrown it away... I started laughing so hard that I had to end the call!

I do what Cathy does as far as removing packaging and putting it back in the freezer to save space. In fact, it was Cathy I thought of as I'm visualizing my MIL's freezer, while trying to organize it with her ready-to-heat-and-serve food. SO...In order to make it easy for her to find things, I labeled the inside of the freezer door, with what's on each shelf. I also thought about using Cathy's bin method to put things in, but the shelves are really too small. Because of that, I put ''like items'' which have been vacuumed sealed, in 2 gallon ziplocks with an extra label on the outside. All she'll have to maneuver are a few of the larger bags on each shelf to find exactly what she's looking for. I'm also adding an inventory list, so she can look over the contents and know what she's going for and where it's located before she ever opens the door. It's always kind of deal to clean out the freezer, isn't it? Good for you for working your way through it.