Fridges and Freezers and Eskies – Oh My!

We’ve come to the conclusion that our current food storage solutions just aren’t cutting it. Admittedly, when we left home 3 months ago, our food requirements looked a little bit different from what they do now. And admittedly, living in a camper trailer is maybe not the best time to make massive dietary changes, but it’s just the way it’s turned out.

So where our 60L fridge was coping just fine when we were eating a heap more legumes, now that Harper’s tummy and my immune system seem to be saying no to beans, it’s bursting at the seams a bit.

We’ve been finding that we’re only able to carry about 5 days worth of fresh food which is not hugely practical for some of the more remote places we’d like to go, and it’s also expensive as our top up shops turn in to full shops and blow our budget right out of whack.

What we really need is a freezer, but that’s not really an impulse buy when you’re trying to live more frugally! So, while we’ve decided to put a savings plan in to place so that we can get a freezer in before next dry season when we plan to head to Arnhem Land, it doesn’t help us much for right now.

So, for now, we’ve gone with a vacuum sealer. I toyed with the idea of one before we left; I even borrowed one to see what I thought – and never got around to using it. We gave it a burl in the camp kitchen yesterday (although with only a 120W draw we would be ok to use it with our inverter and not drain our battery too much) and I was pretty impressed. It’s definitely created a lot more room in the fridge, and although getting it done was a little time consuming it’s certainly no more so than having to trek through a supermarket.

We’re hoping to get a fortnight out of this shop; if we do we’ll have cut our expenditure by $17 a day which is pretty huge when you think about it.

After all, a dollar saved is another day sitting on a beach somewhere.

PS – We’re nominated in the 2014 Bupa Best Blog Awards – check out our fancy badge!