Quote:
Originally Posted by cwk
Yup, old thread, but very useful.
My first thought was not about 2 month old food. It was about not letting mold grow in the refrigerator. That sounded like a good reason to leave the fridge on.
But, then I thought about the power outage we just had with Hurricane Matthew. We only lost power for 22 hours. We had put ice cubes in a plastic glass in the freezer as an indicator of things thawing in the freezer. We had a mandatory evacuation; took most everything, but left the frozen food. There wasn't that much anyway. When we came home the ice cubes were partially melted and refrozen. We tossed everything in the fridge just to be safe. The cost of the lost food was less than the $100 deductible at the Emergency Room for food poisoning, and a lot less painful.
We are not paranoid. But, if we know we have a planned trip coming up we work on using up all of the perishable food before we go. No, we usually do not turn the fridge off, but we do know the (small) risk. If another storm is headed our way (larger risk), we probably will empty the fridge and open the doors.
Just my thoughts...
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Thanks for the follow-up thoughts! Had a similar issue with power off on fridge and ice cubes melting in automatic maker - ended up damaging the ice maker with thawing, dripping in, and refreezing. I agree that everything out, and doors open, is the way to go.