The Garage Freezer Is What the American Dream Is Made of

Like all good suburban housing developments, the HOA-funded cul-de-sacs of the neighborhood I grew up in hid a few dark urban legends. One involved a street-wide love triangle that ended in a couple’s financial ruin; another cast doubt on the “accidental” poisoning of a pair of relentlessly barky dachshunds. But the rumor that haunted me the most was about the little girl on the corner who, they say, locked her kitten in her family’s standalone garage freezer.

The disturbing thought of this frozen cat-sicle was exacerbated by the fact that, as a teen, I was occasionally asked to babysit this very child. One night, when I was sure she was asleep, I went in search of some snacks in the garage and flicked on the light to reveal that, indeed, a large, 5-by-3-foot freezer was plugged in right between the tool bench and a stack of paper towels. It had white sides and a lid with metal hinged locks and was definitely large enough to hide a babysitter’s body in, while still leaving plenty of room for a kitten. Was it the same freezer? Surely they would have purchased a new one after the whole cat thing, right? I walked over, flipped back the locks with a clack, and peered inside. Popsicles, several racks of ribs, and a thick black garbage bag tightly wrapped around…something. Probably some steaks. Probably. I slammed the lid and ran inside.

As you might guess, I’ve spent most of my life a little wary of freezers. I’ve written before about how my mom wielded her side-by-side freezer like a weapon, holding onto small foil-wrapped morsels of food for questionable lengths of time before periodically unwrapping each one with surprise and serving it to the family. And there was the running joke involving my grandmother who, for decades, offered us what was very likely the same frozen tray of shrimp cocktail whenever we visited. Freezers long seemed to me, at worst, like a food preservation risk, and at best, a type of culinary limbo where foods lived for a few months before being ultimately tossed.

But I grew up. I moved into a small house, then — when I had kids — a slightly larger one in a vaguely tract-home looking subdivision from the 1960s complete with a detached garage. The pandemic happened, which had me embracing my freezer in new ways, while at the same time my children got bigger, and thus hungrier, and food prices swelled to the point where my $150 weekly budget barely made a dent. And so it came to be that I now stare at the less-junky corner of my garage and wonder what it might look like with my own sofa-sized, flip-top chest freezer tucked into it.

I’ve come to realize that the standalone chest freezer is so much more than just an alleged pet coffin, or a doomsday prepper toy, or the place where the Texas side of my family stores their annual hunting yield (may they interest you in, say, 40 pounds of venison sausage?). The Big Freezer has, in fact, become a certain type of status symbol, a gleaming idol of adulthood that somehow simultaneously showcases both wealth and thrift.

I do, of course, have a freezer: a standard side-by-side number that’s attached to my refrigerator. But its narrow width is limiting. With the ice dispenser included, I basically have room for some frozen vegetables, ice cream, chicken nuggets, popsicles, waffles, a lone gallon bag of chicken stock, some bagels, and maybe a package of ground beef. The rest is full of cold packs (for kid boo-boos) and more cold packs (for kid lunches). Sheet pan? Forget about it.

But a chest freezer is bigger, and so, so much better. Not just a frosty appendage to another appliance, it’s a dedicated preservation tool, deep and wide enough to allow for the most superfluous of freezing. With a devoted sofa-sized freezer in my possession, I could stock up on bags of fancy pellet ice, whole frozen pizzas, and store quart upon quart of stock. I could make my own popsicles, meal-prep lunches and dinners, and disinfect a heap of fluffy stuffed animals at once.

My partner was recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and our diet shifted dramatically toward lower carb, higher protein meals as a result. With a freezer, I could subscribe to one of those enticing, fancy, mail-order fish and meat companies, or maybe even test my luck at a meat raffle. On the other end of the sustainability spectrum, I could have the space to freeze all my compost and save my kitchen scraps for stock. As I get older, I too feel the emotional tug of leftovers-hoarding, longing to hold onto those last few bites of quiche or meatloaf for a rainy day. I yearn to, like my grandmother, stash some shrimp in the freezer for the promise of company — even if I never, ever serve them.

Or it might be that, even more than I desire to possess a chest freezer, I desire to be the type of person who buys such a thing. Today’s large-freezer owner exemplifies an aspirational level of pragmatism that we should all strive to achieve. They understand the budget savings of buying in bulk and how the combined power of cold and time can make one season’s bounty last forever. A freezer owner has a Costco membership. They have one of those car cup holder thingies that organizes all their junk, and a little hook in their sink to keep their sponge from getting icky. They maximize their annual 401K contributions, wear SPF 70 daily, and replace their HVAC’s air filters every six months on the dot. Their socks match and they take daily vitamins. In short, a Big Freezer owner has their shit together — a state that I, like so many elder millennials, find persistently elusive in a society that has failed to deliver on what it promised the generations that came before.

So what’s stopping me from buying my dream freezer? Lack of space, mostly, and more pressing purchases, plus very real fear of actually becoming my mother. And anyway, we just got a cat.