{"id":294,"date":"2009-06-16T10:46:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-16T17:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/?p=294"},"modified":"2009-06-16T10:46:24","modified_gmt":"2009-06-16T17:46:24","slug":"buying-fresh-vs-freezing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/2009\/06\/16\/buying-fresh-vs-freezing\/","title":{"rendered":"Buying fresh vs. freezing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been a member of Costco – I’ve lived in smaller apartments since going to college and lived alone for many of those years and have never had the space or need to buy in bulk.<\/p>\n

Additionally, I’ve wondered about the cost-effectiveness of buying such mass quantities (at a discount) and then paying for the local storage (in one’s home).\u00a0 In essence, by buying in smaller quantities, I’m passing on the cost of storage back to the retailers.<\/p>\n

In addition to the physical space required to store this stuff, there’s also costs for things like extra large or additional fridges\/freezers.\u00a0 I found this post from Get Rich Slowly<\/a> to be pretty interesting in two ways:\u00a0 First, the breakdown of the cost of operating an additional freezer.\u00a0 Granted, I believe his math is a little flawed (it doesn’t take into account differences when the unit is opened more or less during a period of time nor does it look at seasonal temperature differences (though he live in Portland so these are probably less extreme than in other parts of the country).\u00a0 A better test would be to monitor the device over a longer period of time.\u00a0 I was surprised by the overall estimated cost of running the freezer – not that expensive really.\u00a0 (I won’t get into other considerations when buying in bulk, storage, the quality of frozen vs. fresh or the cost implications of a long-term power outage…)<\/p>\n

The operating cost is an interesting piece of data.\u00a0 Leading me to the second item I found interesting – the energy measurement device that he has – the Kill-a-watt meter<\/a>.\u00a0 This is such a great idea.\u00a0 You plug in your electronic devices and the unit measures the electrical draw.\u00a0 I’m really intrigued by this and am considering buying one – I tend to be a little geeky that way.<\/p>\n

To me (and it’s not just me, I’ve read plenty of others who are saying the same thing) one of the biggest problems we have today with energy conservation is a lack of measurement tools.\u00a0 Time and again, reading reports of the hybrid electric vehicles you see the authors talking about their energy use.\u00a0 Yes, this is key to a hybrid car – but it’s also an indication of how easy it is to report on that statistic – these cars make it incredibly easy to see what your consumption is.<\/p>\n

It would be really interesting to see what would happen if all of our devices were telling us how much energy they were consuming on a daily basis.\u00a0 I for one am OK with energy conservation – I unplug some devices when they’re not in use, but even with my $35 monthly utility bill, I know I could shave off more – I wonder how much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been a member of Costco – I’ve lived in smaller apartments since going to college and lived alone for many of those years and have never had the space or need to buy in bulk. Additionally, I’ve wondered about the cost-effectiveness of buying such mass quantities (at a discount) and then paying for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Buying fresh vs. freezing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-life-and-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knuetter.com\/christian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}