How do you manage frozen food when replacing a fridge freezer?

[WillowTit]

if you buy a new fridge freezer
how do you manage with your current frozen food?
do you empty the old fridge freezer for 24 hours?

Eat most of it.

If I know I’m going to replace it, then I empty it. If it breaks down, food will get chucked, if there’s too much to eat.

Use space in friends or family freezers.

Keep the old freezer for a day

Just put in cool bags etc, most stuff is fine really.

But new freezer. Turn it on wait for it to freeze down and then swap food over and get rid of the old freezer by calling the local scrap man is what I’ve done in the past. Scrap merchants pick it up kerbside for free.

oh good idea, keep the old one
except it is too huge for me to move and the kitchen is too small but it is something to consider

A freezer will generally be fine for 18-24hrs turned off with the door kept shut. When we've changed over, we've just plugged the new one in next to the old one (mildly inconvenient at most) waited until its cold and then swapped over, unplugged the old one and left outside to defrost

When I had an emergency recently several friends said afterward that they'd have taken frozen stuff for a couple of days and put it in their freezers. As it was I had a second freezer in the garage that I no longer use day-to-day, but that I could use to park stuff.

Fridge things I used cardboard boxes, duvets, bags of ice from the supermarket, more duvets, and I didn't die of food poisoning. Bloke delivered the new ff, took the old one away, but I had to wait six hours before plugging the new one in, and then more hours until it got down to temperature.

top tip, do it in midwinter.

As if.

Its a good opportunity to eat down the freezer and discover what has been in the back. Its like a spring clean for freezers. Then anything left went into neighbours freezer. I found it handy for them to take old freezer away. New freezer needs to stand for few hours before it can be turned on. Then New freezer looks nice and tidy (for few weeks)

When I knew mine was being replaced, I just spent a couple of weeks running down supplies - eating all the lucky dip leftovers and throwing out random bits of crap that would never get eaten. Anything left got put in a cool box with lots of ice blocks.

Wiggle the old one out of place so there's room for the new one and marvel at the amount of crap that was hidden underneath clean . Leave it in the way for a day and have the new one put in place, once that's up and running you can transfer everything and get rid of the old one.

We have always just got a new one from AO and got them to dispose of the old one. We eat as much of the really perishable stuff as we can and then just put the other stuff straight in and it’s been fine - officially you’re meant to leave it for a few hours but done that a few times now and no issues.