November 4th-8th is Talk Money Week, an opportunity to engage with our finances and have open conversations about money. Gemma in our editorial team explains how the loss of the fridge in her shared accommodation has increased costs for all flatmates.
Our fridge-freezer broke down on Friday 13th September. Friday the 13th, notoriously unlucky. I didn’t realise, until not having a fridge, just how dependent we are on being able to store food. On reflection, this seems like a silly realisation. Women only started to enter the workforce after electricity became easily accessible and following that refrigeration. Before this, preparing to feed a family was a full day's work. Fast-forward to the present day, the UN estimates that 17% of food available to consumers is wasted each year, a lot due to lack of access to proper storage. Hence not having access to a fridge-freezer has caused great stress in my house.
I live in a rented flat with two other flatmates. The benefit of living in a rented home is that when something breaks, someone will fix it for you. However, the downside of this is that there is rarely any urgency.
The fridge is still under warranty, so the landlord wants to take advantage of this, leaving us at the mercy of the manufacturer finding time to fix or replace the fridge. To date, we have had four no-shows, and three failed attempts at repair.
Frustratingly it is impossible to speak to the manufacturer. When calling, each dial pad option leads to the suggestion of the AI chatbot. “Further details can be found on our website”, followed by the dreaded automated “good-bye” and the old school phone left off-the-hook tone.
Given that a fridge is so essential for modern living, should there be more urgency to get this fixed? Is this the landlord's problem or ours as tenants? The answer is not so simple, and the mention of small claims court has been thrown about a lot by the agents.
Moving on from the ethics of the fridge manufacturer and onto costs. It is so expensive and time-consuming not being able to store fresh produce. In the “working fridge era,” I took for granted how much money is saved by storing food and being able to freeze leftovers from meals. The other day, there was an offer on cheese in the local supermarket, two for £5. A deal that I would usually take advantage of. However, because of the broken fridge, I could only buy one block and had to throw away the leftovers two days later.
Let's now look in more detail at the added cost of not being able to store perishables, using milk as an example. Two pints of milk cost ~£1.20 and say lasts one adult five days. Using these figures, the cost of milk for the week would be £1.68. Not being able to store two pints means buying one pint a day (often throwing away leftovers) at £0.85, costing £5.95 for the week.
This means that the additional cost of milk for the week is £4.27! The added cost being 2.5x more than the regular spend. This is enormous! Not to mention the extra time spent in the supermarket, the cost of the extra travel to the store and the cost of the takeaways including coffees from cafes purchased in despair. Also, I live with flatmates, we live our own lives, meaning that our food and food budgets are separate. My reason for mentioning this is that any waste and added outgoings can be costed three times over. Not good for our wallets or the planet! (Wasted food emits greenhouse gases when it decomposes).
The price of food has skyrocketed in the last few years. The Food Foundation estimates that the price of a food basket has increased ~24-25%since April 2022. I’m not a money-saving expert (I’ll leave that to Martin Lewis), but from my recent fridge-less existence, I can say with great confidence that taking advantage of bulk food offers, freezing leftovers and using all the food in the fridge is a fool-proof way to save money!
Post-fridge, (RIP – I miss you dearly), it takes much longer to do a shop and many more trips to the store, some days once for every meal consumed. I stare at the shelves, trying to work out what products will last for a few days out on the counter, all whilst trying to drown out the voice in my head whispering to get chips from the local kebab shop. Eggs, butter, bread and apples have become a go-to meal. A beige attempt at a nourishing, filling meal with minimal waste. Tomatoes and broccoli are also a godsend and add some colour to the otherwise beige palette.
Two months on, our fridge freezer is still broken. We did get some money off the rent to buy a cheap, under-counter temporary replacement. My flatmates and I have taken to cooking for each other to save on leftovers storage, but we are still freezer-less and frustrated!
