No appliance works harder for less adulation than your fridge. It happily keeps condiments cool, leftovers safe and drinks icy, and asks only for an occasional clean in return.
But are you getting the best out of it? Or are you unwittingly putting your food – and yourself – at risk by not using the fridge and freezer properly, especially in the Australian summer heat? We asked some experts for their tips on how to take these stoic workhorses from whitegoods to whitegreats.
Choose the right fridge for your needs
Freezer above or freezer below? French door or side-by-side? LCD display or built-in ice maker? When it comes to choosing the right fridge for you, Choice Australia’s whitegoods team leader Ashley Iredale believes the most important thing to think about is size.
“There’s a tendency in our culture to see bigger as being better but that’s not necessarily the case,” he says, adding that a larger fridge will not only cost more to buy but use more energy to run.
As for the style of fridge, Iredale says it’s just a matter of personal preference. Choice, however, advises against narrow side-by-side models.
“We find they’re almost universally terrible. You get really uneven temps from the top to the bottom.”
Give it space
Iredale says one of the most common mistakes when installing a fridge is not leaving enough space above, behind and around it for the heat exchange to occur efficiently.
“Your fridge has to take the heat energy from inside and dissipate it outside,” he says. “If you don’t have room for air to circulate, your fridge will still work but it will have to work a lot harder.”
A gap of five to 10 centimetres on each side and at the back, he says, will lead to decreased energy consumption and an increased lifespan for your fridge.
Find the cold
A 2023 report by RMIT university researchers found that 17% of the fridges monitored in the study fell outside the recommended temperature range of 3C to 7C.
Says lead researcher Dr Bhavna Middha: “We never think of blaming the appliance itself but temperatures can vary greatly inside the fridge … It can have a big impact on food waste.”
To find the coolest spots, Choice recommends investing a few dollars in a fridge thermometer. Iredale says: “Don’t trust the settings on the fridge – they’re aspirational.
“Measure the temperatures yourself and adjust the settings until your thermometer hits 3C.”
Keep everything in its place
A fridge’s door is typically one of its warmer areas, which organisation expert Chantel Mila Ibbotson says makes it perfect for storing condiments, pickles and “anything that doesn’t need to stay quite as cold”.
Iredale agrees, adding that while the door might be the most convenient place to store milk, it’s usually one of the least cold areas, meaning your milk will turn sooner. “Save the warmer spot for your butter so it’s easier to spread.”
The coldest spot of the fridge, Ibbotson says, is usually the bottom shelf, making it ideal for meat and fish. “If you have any meat juice leaks, having it on the bottom shelf also helps prevent cross-contamination as well.”
Iredale adds that the bottom shelf is also the best place to keep your beers chilled. “A much better option than an energy-sucking bar fridge.”
Take a fridge photo
Heading to the supermarket? Take a photo of the inside of your fridge before you leave, says Ibbotson. It can help avoid doubling-up on ingredients. “When you’re thinking of a recipe and you can’t remember if you have mayonnaise, you can just look at the photo on your phone.”
Don’t lose track of what’s in your freezer
While freezers are a convenient way to store certain foods, they too often become long-term dumping grounds for leftovers and bulk meat purchases. The Food Safety Information Council says frozen food should be kept at -18C or below for up to six weeks without greatly affecting quality, though from a food safety perspective, properly frozen goods can be kept for years.
Ibbotson says without an efficient organisation system “it’s too easy to lose track of what’s hiding in there”.
For those with drawers in their freezers, she suggests taking inspiration from a filing cabinet and storing supermarket packs of meat vertically. “It prevents things getting lost and forgotten about.”
Iredale also recommends the filing cabinet system, including for leftover pasta sauce, frozen flat in sealable bags. He says it’s important to comprehensively label food before it hits the freezer “so in six months when you pull them out again, you know what they actually are”.
Keep it clean inside and out
Cleaning your fridge regularly doesn’t just keep smells and bacteria at bay. It’s also important for the efficiency and longevity of the appliance, says Iredale. “Wiping your seals with a damp cloth can help prevent small temperature leaks and is a good opportunity to check for any cracks or other damage that could be impacting your fridge’s performance.”
For older fridges, he adds that you should unplug the fridge and run the same damp cloth over the coils at the rear of your fridge. “Think of the dust as insulating the pipes that are supposed to be shedding heat, ultimately meaning higher energy bills.”
Keep it well stocked (but not overstocked)
It’s widely understood that overstocking your fridge can affect its ability to cool everything properly. But Iredale says the opposite can also be true; the thermal mass of a well-stocked fridge can hold a more consistent temperature, without requiring the compressor to cycle as much as it would for an empty fridge.
So how do you know if you’ve got it just right?
He says: “If your fridge looks full but you can reach anything without having to move a bunch of stuff to get to it, then that’s the sweet spot.”
