I have heard that keeping the refrigerator and freezer more full makes them run more efficiently and use less electricity. For a while I was keeping gallons of water in my fridge because I was living alone and did not fill up the fridge very well at all by myself. I did not notice a difference in my electric bill at all. Does it really do any good?
When you have more food in your refrigerator/freezer the fridge has to work harder to keep everything cold and so uses MORE electricity not less. For example one day I really filled up my fridge to the brim with frozen meals and ice cream. After a few hours I actually saw droplets of water on the food which meant the freezer wasn't cold enough or over capacity. So I lowered the temperature 1 degree and then it was fine. I actually have a deep freezer in addition to my refrigerator.
I think that you should just fill up the fridge with whatever you need to put in there, there is no need to deliberately put in things to use up the capacity, or take things out that will cause you inconvenience. Unless you have a really old fridge, most fridges today have good efficiency and you probably won't notice a difference with these techniques, just don't overfill the fridge is probably your biggest saver, to prevent food being spoilt as they weren't cold enough and the fridge working extra hard as it is struggling to meet the temperature target.
That's really weird that it's the opposite of what they tell you. I wonder why that is? I thought the cold food was supposed to retain coldness better than empty space, but I guess not.
I was told that keeping a plastic bottle of full of water in the freezer will lower electric cost. After it freezes it will help keep temperatures low when the refrigerator is cycling.
