If you’re planning a vacation or need to leave your home for an extended period, there’s a simple yet brilliant trick you should know before walking out the door—especially if you’re leaving food in your freezer. While it might seem like your frozen goods will stay perfectly fine in your absence, power outages can happen unexpectedly.
And if the power goes out and comes back on while you’re away, your freezer may stop working temporarily, causing the food to thaw and then refreeze, which could lead to spoilage. The worst part? You may never even realize it happened. Fortunately, a clever and easy solution exists to help determine whether your food stayed frozen or if it needs to be tossed. This trick only requires a cup of water and a coin—either a penny or a quarter will work—and was shared by a woman named Sheila Pulanco Russell, whose helpful tip has gained massive attention online. In her now-viral Facebook post, she explains the method known as the “one cup tip.” Start by filling a cup or mug with water and placing it in your freezer until it’s completely frozen.
Once the water is solid ice, take a coin and place it on top of the frozen surface. Then, leave the cup in your freezer. This little setup acts as a freeze-test indicator while you’re away. When you return, simply check the cup. If the coin is still resting on top of the ice, you can rest assured that your freezer maintained its temperature the entire time, and your food remained safely frozen. However, if the coin has sunk to the bottom of the cup, that means the ice melted completely at some point, indicating a full thaw occurred—and the food inside your freezer may no longer be safe to eat. Even if the coin is only halfway down or in the middle of the ice, that still suggests that the freezer warmed up enough to partially melt, then refreeze.
In that case, you should carefully evaluate whether the food is worth keeping. When in doubt, it’s best to throw it out. This method is especially helpful during emergencies or natural disasters when evacuations are necessary, such as hurricanes or wildfires. But the beauty of this trick is that it’s useful even during a regular trip or weekend getaway. Power can be unreliable during storms, or even due to local utility maintenance, and you may not know an outage occurred unless your clock is flashing or you find food has a strange texture or smell. But by using this frozen water-and-coin test, you gain a much clearer idea of what happened inside your freezer.
And even better, you don’t have to use this trick just for vacations. It’s smart to keep a cup like this in your freezer at all times so that any power outage—whether brief or prolonged—won’t leave you guessing about the safety of your frozen food. The test takes just a few minutes to set up and could save you from the unpleasant surprise of eating something that’s gone bad. Food poisoning is no joke, and sometimes thawed food can look and smell fine but still harbor bacteria that could make you sick. That’s why Sheila emphasizes in her post that if you ever feel unsure about your food’s safety, don’t take a chance—just toss it. Your health and the health of your family is far more important than salvaging groceries. With such a quick and inexpensive solution at your fingertips, there’s no reason not to try it. A coin and a cup of water might seem like an odd combination, but it’s a surprisingly effective way to keep tabs on your freezer’s performance when you can’t be there to monitor it yourself. So the next time you plan a trip or leave the house for more than a day or two, don’t forget to freeze that cup and place a coin on top. It might just give you the peace of mind you didn’t know you needed.
