Confused Newbies

[Montana_139]

This is KK. Sue, you'll be amazed, after a few months of fulltiming, what you can fit into that refrigerator (and all those other small spaces, for that matter)! We spent last summer in a place 40 driving mins away from the nearest grocery store -- that's when we bought the extra chest fridge/freezer. Right now we are less than 7 miles away from WalMart and 5 or 6 supermarkets, not to mention all the farm stands, etc. You just adjust... AND you learn to read labels: if it doesn't say "refrigerate after opening", put it in the pantry! Examples? Ketchup and, yes, even mayonnaise(!)...!!

[sreigle]

I agree with KK. We went from a 25 cu ft refrigerator in our stick home to this 8 cu ft fridge in our Montana. We've been fulltiming for more than 27 months now and it's really not been a problem. We don't go "grocery shopping" every day, we just buy things with space in mind. So we do go more often. We sometimes stop on the way home from somewhere else and pick up a gallon of milk. We've even learned we can keep two gallons in there. We just pour the contents of one gallon jug into quart sized containers. They fit nicely on one of the door shelves. We keep a jug of koolaid or lemonade on the door also, along with pop, butter, and several other things. Vicki put a tension rod along the back of the upper fridge shelf, just below those fins. That area would otherwise go to waste because of the fins. Now there's a few jars of various pickle types, BBQ sauce, and other similar sized containers back there.

I could go on and on. It IS smaller and it DOES take some adjusting. But you'll be amazed at how you will adapt.

As the cheapskate in this family I bleed the most from knowing that we cannot, because of space, take advantage of the cheaper prices from volume purchases. But the alternative is to stop fulltiming and I'm sure not ready to take that step.

Good luck.