A freezer alarm could save your bacon — and all your other frozen foods. Keeping a regular and safe freezer temperature is key to preserving your food and avoiding waste and freezer burn.
What’s a freezer alarm and how can it help you? Learn how this simple gadget can you save you money and worry so that you don’t waste food in your freezer when the temps rise too high.
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Perhaps you’re heard stories from friends or acquaintances who came home to find that a power failure or open freezer door open had caused the contents of their freezer to thaw completely, leaving a soggy, stinky, sad mess.
You commiserated with their plight, but inwardly you were sighing, I’m so glad that’s not me.
But life happens. Kids forget to shut the door. GFIs trigger unexpectedly. The seal onthe freezer fails.
There are any number of things that could happen, causing your refrigerator or freezer to rise to unsafe temperatures, triggering food loss.
A freezer alarm can help prevent food loss. It’s this little doo-dad with sensors to place inside the unit and a screen that clips to the outside — and screams its little head off if things start to heat up in there.
While some refrigerator and freezers come with their own sensors and monitors, even these can fail you. We’ve had it happen where the unit displayed a cool temperature while inside the heat and humidity were on the rise.
Having a secondary product to read the temperature level in your freezer can be cheap insurance against food loss.
Types of Freezer Alarms
This is the particular freezer alarm I own, hanging on one of the magnetic hooks I keep for hanging heavy stuff (and light stuff) on my fridge and freezer.
There are several types of freezer alarms and freezer door alarms. Some alert you to the temperature rising to unsafe levels while others ping a reminder when the door is left ajar.
These products typically work for both fridge and freezers.
In fact, we’ve had several refrigerators die on us in the last ten years (one was ours and one was our landlords). In both instances, I temporarily removed our freezer alarm from the freezer to monitor our refrigerator. It quickly alerted me to the exact temperature inside the fridge, showing that the unit was failing to keep things cool.
Do you need a freezer alarm?
Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!
If you store more than ice and ice packs in your freezer, it’s in your best interests to have a freezer alarm so that you can be alerted when the deep freeze reaches unsafe temperatures. This may give you time to correct the problem and/or move the food to another location to prevent food loss.
What to do in case of a power loss?
If the power loss is temporary and soon to be remedied, leave the freezer or fridge door shut and do not open it. The food in a half to full freezer will be safe for 24 to 48 hours.
If there is no hope of restoring power to the unit and the food contains ice crystals, some food may be refrozen. See this chart from FoodSafety.gov for details. (Yes, meat can be safely refrozen!)
If the food has been at temps higher than 40 degrees for longer than 2 hours, you will need to throw it away. (Again, consult the chart for the few exceptions to this rule.)
More Tips for Freezing Food
This post was originally published on January 25, 2010. It has been updated for content and clarity.
Melissa
Great tip, and thanks for including the price; that was one of my first questions. Just yesterday someone (not I!) left the freezer door open. Fortunately I noticed it before things were spoiled, but that doesn’t always happen!
Catherine B
Great idea! I did not know such an item existed but I need one ASAP. We have had some “close” calls but luckily not lost much food.
Great post~
solstice letters
This is genius! I remember well the day that my mother mourned the loss of months of pre-prepared frozen meals. I’ll be getting one of these. Thanks for sharing.
Kim
That looks neat. We are in the process of looking for the right size freezer. I will be adding one of these to the list, as well. Thanks!
Nikki
I had a freezer die once when I was 1000 miles away during Thanksgiving. The freezer was plugged into a faulty outlet. And when it stopped receiving power and the frozen meat thawed, the blood dripped through and right out the bottom. It was a horrid HORRID smell to behold after getting home a few days later. It completely killed the whole thing. I have a new freezer now. And I am SO GLAD to come across this handy tip. I’m going to get me one of those alarms immediately!
Ana
We’ve been wanting to purchase half a grass-fed steer but I’m concerned about losing the investment should something happen with the freezer. Looks like it’s not such a rarity. But an alarm is pretty inexpensive (I didn’t know). And I had no idea there was insurance on frozen goods. This was so helpful.
Linda
I’ve never heard of that! I am definitely getting one though….Last year I noticed a puddle of water coming from our freezer in the garage. Turns out a breaker was tripped and the freezer was on that breaker! The food was fine – it was only off for a few hours and everything was still frozen solid, so we were lucky! But this post reminds me that I need a dedicated outlet for the freezer and a freezer alarm!
Tara
Thank you so much for sharing this! I will be investing in one for nothing more than some cheap peace-of-mind!
We used to live in Florida and would buy a 1/4 cow in June…right before hurricane season hit. I would be so worried from June to November that we would have to evacuate and would come home to find everything thawed! We don’t worry too much about hurricanes these days, but anything could happen to cut power to my freezer. Thanks again for sharing!
Lori F.
Thanks so much for talking about the freezer alarm! We have a medium size upright and my children have left the door slightly ajar more than once. A couple of times it was left that way overnight and the things on the door completely defrosted. About 18 months ago a googled “freezer alarm” and didn’t find anything. I will be ordering this TODAY! $10 now is a small amount to insure a bigger loss later.
Becky
My husband and our boys looooove kettle chips. They are crunchy and yummy. We’d love to try to Pirate booty snacks.
Jennifer
I got my first chest freezer for Christmas, so I need to buy this as well! Great idea!
Rebecca
We had a similar thing happen last week! Only it wasn’t that the power was out. It was because the freezer was a little too full and the ice cream held the lid up. Which led to lots of ice around the rim before I noticed. Sadly, the ice cream had been in there since before Christmas so we had been wasting $ cooling a freezer in our dining room that was open. We do have insurance on our freezer if our power goes out, but a $10 alarm would help for those times when we just stick too much stuff in there in an unorganized manner.
Susie's Homemade
What a great idea! I say that alo when I come here:-)
Hattie
That’s so sweet of your husband to try to not laugh at you! Mine probably would have started cracking up at me…:) Although, he has now made a few trips to the grocery store for me with a list and a stack of coupons, so he might better understand why losing all of that hard work would cause one to start crying…:)
Jessica @ This Blessed Life
That happened to us a few weeks ago – although it was only long enough for all of the bananas to melt a lovely juice all over the inside, the fudgesicles to become unrecognizable, and the berries to start to “bleed.” Thankfully, the meat stayed rock hard since it was only unplugged for a few hours. I was still at the point of tears, though! 🙂 That is a great device and I definitely think we’re going to have to get ourselves one! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
chef Juls
yep that’s us only it was the refrigerator in the garage and the only way I realized it was I went to get cheese out of it’s freezer..thought…hum..must have left the door open…got to checking everything else..luckily didn’t lose everything. Weird thing is the potatoes in the crisper drawer froze and then thawed YUCK
Penny
I have had a near miss with loosing all the food in the freezer. Thankfully, my freezer is the variety that attempts to suck the door closed itself, so that feature probably saved our butts. Some things towards the front started to unthaw a might, but the rest was just fine. Shew! After that mess, I have really started to can just about anything I can get my hands on, including meats and vegetables. My husband’s joke is that I’ll can anything that will sit still long enough! However, this gadget seems fabulous for the stuff which remains in deep freeze…largely because I ran out of jars. 😉
Heather
How cool is that gadget??!! That goes to the top of my “wanna” list! We left my 25 year old chest freezer in Missouri when we moved to Florida, no room on the moving truck…I miss it 🙁
we have an upright that the door has gotten left open more than once, fortunately I’ve caught, but that won’t last.
Cas
About 6 months ago my freezer somehow got opened…a big huge upright. We had stuffed that thing to the max before I quit work…knowing that times would be tight. I paid full price for almost everything in there….it was before I had to really learn about saving and it was also in the days of 2 incomes…when we would spend way more money feeding 2 people than you should. When I think now what we used to go to the grocery store and spend I still cringe…needless to say I was very upset. I mean very upset. My husband was also but he didn’t quite understand why I was so completely rocked…he does now…now that we are slowly but surely restocking it …on a budget. So I totally understand the pain….the funny thing is ours does have an alarm and it is in my washroom and it is sensitive….it goes off if we leave it open for a few minutes just loading it…I don’t know why it didn’t this time.
Southern Gal
I feel your pain. Our freezer is a huge upright that sits in a corner of my, umm, well it is supposed to be a dining room. We use it as a toy/music/school room/library. One day my youngest was putting away some toy cars in the big carrier case with wheels. He tucked it nicely next to the freezer. A day later I go to get something out of the freezer and notice I don’t have to pull very hard to get the door opened. There is a neat little pedal next to the freezer that you can step on to help you get the door open. Well, that little case of cars was sitting smack dab on top of that little pedal. Bummer. At least it wasn’t full.
My husband’s grandmother who canned and put things up in the freezer finally insured everything in her freezers after losing so much food. Yep, insured. I’ll bet this alarm would have tickled her.