How To Make A Temporary Refrigerator Freezer

There are a million reasons why you may need to make a temporary refrigerator and freezer some day. Maybe your refrigerator or freezer suddenly die and you don't want your food to go bad until you can get a replacement. Maybe the power goes out and you need a place to store perishable items for a while. Or, maybe you're getting a new refrigerator and need to store items temporarily while the old one gets removed and new one is installed.

Well, okay, maybe there aren't a million reasons but there are three reasons at least. One option is to use a cooler, but that assumes you have a cooler and it's big enough. Even then, the ice melts and your food sits in a soaking wet mess which is not ideal.

Put one container inside the other, fill gap with ice.

In my case, I didn't have a large cooler but I did have two buckets where one was larger than the other. This allowed me to put one bucket inside the other and fill the gap with ice. The inner bucket was a typical Home Depot 5 Gallon bucket. The outer bucket was a large storage bin (used for toys, or for ice/drinks at parties). The outer container could be something else like a (cleaned out) garbage can, and possibly even heavy duty garbage bags (triple bagged). The point is to use what you have around.

I dropped the Home Depot bucket inside and filled the gap between buckets with ice (couple of 20 pound bags from Costco did the trick). I then put all of the food from my freezer that I needed to save inside the Home Depot bucket (with a towel on the bottom to absorb any moisture).

The lid next to the freezer

Take a single ice cube and put it in a ziplock bag. Put that inside the orange bucket, near the bottom or middle. You'll use this later to ensure the temperature stayed below freezing. If the ice cube is melted the temp rose above freezing, possibly spoiling your food. If the ice cube is intact things should be okay (but always check food to be safe and when in doubt, throw it out).

Side note: this ice cube trick is also great to do in your normal freezer before going on vacation. If it's melted when you come home that means your power went out while you were away and your food may have gone bad.

Put a bag or plastic wrap over the top of the Home Depot bucket to keep melting ice water from soaking your food items. Not cover the bucket with a couple of inches of ice as well.

The closed refrigerator / freezer.

I then wrapped the sides of the outer bucket in a few layers of towels and blankets for insulation. The overall contraption was place in the middle of my room so that if it leaked I'd know and not ruin my baseboard wall trim. For the top, I tape a towel to a piece of old cardboard box I had. The towel side goes down and on top of the cardboard side puts some weights on it (I used some old wood) to make a good seal.

Four days later everything was still frozen and very little ice melted.

If you're doing this for more than a day, you may want to check it on day two and add more ice. The original ice tends to melt and settle a bit. After that, I didn't top mine off at all and it lasted for several more days until our new refrigerator arrived. Total cost? Just a few dollars for a couple of bags of ice.

How To Make A Temporary Refrigerator & Freezer