Forgo the Garage Fridge

IT'S CONVENIENT or have an extra refrigerator in the house for overflow food storage during holidays and parties-but the garage Isn't necessarily the best place to put it.

Unless your garage is air conditioned or insulated, it gets awfully hot in there during the summer, and that can force the refrigerator to work over­ time to keep food cold. You'll see the cost of that hard work on your electric bill.

However, if you must keep a refrigerator in the garage, keep a few things in mind:

It's not just the heat that stresses out a refrigerator in the garage: Manufacturers also advise against placing one in any space where the temperature dips below 55 degrees in the winter. In an unheated garage, the fridge can warm up frozen food if the room temperature dips below freezing.

Have an electrician upgrade the electrical circuits in your garage before you plug In a refrigerator. If the appliance overtaxes the circuit and flips a breaker, you could wind up with a lot of spoiled food. You can Install a temperature monitor with an alarm to alert you if your refrigerator gets too warm or goes out so that you can salvage your food.

Plug your refrigerator only into a grounded wall outlet.

Avoid plugging the appliance in loan outlet that's controlled by a switch. Someone could accidentally turn the switch off and cut power to the fridge. Clean a garage-based refrigerator more often than the one ln the kitchen.
The garage gets much dirtier than the house does, and older fridges often have looser seals.

Don't stack items around the refrigerator or lean anything against lt. Like any appliance, it needs room to “breathe" or it won't operate efficiently.

If your garage refrigerator used to be your kitchen refrlgerator1 it's probably pretty old and very Inefficient. You're better off buying a small, new refrigerator and recycling the old one so you won't waste energy and unnecessarily run up your electric bill.