Drawers Part 5 (The Fridge and Finale)
And here we are. The Finale. If you’ve made it this far, bless your heart lol.
In all seriousness though, I hope someone someday reads this and gets some inspiration or new ideas that they can apply to their own storage systems. I’m a creative person at heart and having things inspire me is one of the best feelings out there.
So to jump right in, I was extremely torn on what kind of fridge to get for the fridge slide. I had some pretty specific measurements to work within, I wanted a fairly decent quality fridge, and I did NOT want to break the bank. An obvious place to start was the big names like ARB and Dometic. I found that most of the ARB fridges would not fit within my specs, and the classic ones that would left a little to be desired in the price/looks/etc department. The Dometic CFX3 55im would have fit VERY well in my setup, but $1100 for a fridge is a hefty price tag. If I was a full-timer, sure I probably would not have thought twice about shelling out for a Dometic. But as a weekend warrior (maybe one small notch above lol), I wasn’t willing to eat that price tag.
Then I came across much cheaper brands like Alpicool. While they were 1/5 of the price of the Dometic, which sounds good to me, they definitely looked like they left a lot to be desired in the overall quality department. That’s when I found a bit of a middle ground with Iceco. Iceco’s website was a little janky, but it was relatively easy to navigate their various lines of fridges. I was immediately drawn to the VL series, as they seemed like a “knock-off” look-alike of fridges from brands like National Luna. Iceco has a few single zone options (just a fridge or just a freezer) and a number of dual zone options (fridge and freezer).
Their VL45s fit my specs perfectly, so I was planning on just grabbing that. Then I noticed the VL60s is the same footprint, just taller. So after finding a coupon, I was able to snag a 60ish quart fridge for just under 500 bucks. It is a THICC fridge, but it fills the drawers slide perfectly. I heard some horror stories about damage in shipping and other customer support issues, but I must be one of the lucky ones. Mine showed up with one tiny little ding that was nothing beyond superficial. And as you can in the photos below, the fridge lid can open PERFECTLY without an interference. I probably have less than an inch worth of clearance, so I’m just gonna pat myself on the back for some bomb-ass measurements haha.
So with the fridge strapped down, and a topper added to the left side of the drawers, it was time for a shakedown! I did a quick weekend trip and all I have to say is wow. The fridge is absolutely massive, and honestly a fair bit of overkill for just a weekend. And I know that open air in the fridge is less efficient, but I was thinking about things in the long-run and figured a larger one would serve me better down the line. I freakin’ love cooking while camping, so it also just gives me flexibility to make some crazy recipes!
It did take me quite a bit of time to figure out the rest of the camping organization setup, but once I did and dialed it in, damn son. It works flawlessly for my kind of camping and what I want out of a rear storage system.
So this is the finale on the drawer system as a whole, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below and I would be happy to answer them!