Defrosting freezer

[SOT3]

I have just spent hours defrosting my freezer which shamefully I hadn't defrosted for about three years. The drawers were stuck in solidly with thick ice.

I never want to be in this situation again, and just wanted to ask how often we are meant to defrost the freezer, and how do you actually do a 'maintainance' defrost to stop the ice building up so badly again?

We do our fridge freezer about three times a year and usually organise it for when we are going away on a holiday or short break.

We run the contents down to nothing before we go away and then turn it off the day before and give it a clean.

When we come home we turn it back on again and have a grocery delivery booked to arrive the following morning.