Unplugged, briefly

Wednesday, 11:55 am

By Kate

Oct

31

2007

I’ve been a little remiss in reading my electric meter the past few days. I just went out to read it and almost fell over from shock. Good shock. In three days time, I’ve only used 6 kilowatt hours. Well, I’ll be darned.

You know what did it? I unplugged the fridge. The only reason I unplugged it was because there was hardly anything in it. No sense in cooling empty space. Now that Terry is gone, I don’t have to keep all my produce tucked away out of sight. And since the house isn’t exactly toasty warm inside, leaving the veggies on the kitchen counter works pretty well. I didn’t have anything particularly perishable in the fridge, so I stuck a couple of frozen cooler blocks inside and unplugged it until I went grocery shopping. The fridge was unplugged for about 36 hours. And that’s the only thing I’ve done differently in the past 3 days.

Well, what a pleasant surprise.

Which leads me to consider....if winter ever reliably arrives, I may just keep the thing unplugged and use blocks of ice (delivered nightly by mother nature) in the cooler, which, I think, is better insulated than the little fridge.

I suppose that may seem rather radical to some, but considering the size of my current fridge, I’d gain some food storage space with the cooler. And I still have to open the door on either one to get out what I want. The only difference is that one box is electrified and the other one isn’t. I’m willing to give it a go. Heck, if I can skate through winter on 2 kilowatt hours per day, I’ll be delighted to try it out.