Why You Need To Be Careful When Using A Hotel Mini Fridge

When you go to a hotel, chances are that you'll usually find a mini-fridge somewhere in the room. Maybe it's under the TV in that big cabinet or right beside the bed. Maybe you find it stocked full of complimentary bottles of fancy water or snacks. Either way, the purpose of the mini-fridge is simple — keep your perishable items cold.

Also known as a "minibar," the minifridge may seem like a relatively new piece of furniture in the modern hotel room, but as Forbes tells us, the idea of a minibar goes back many years. From the United States President Abraham Lincoln trying to open a locked minibar chest in the 1800s to a senator in the 1900s delivering a furious rant about locked minibars being un-American, the minifridge has certainly been a colorful feature of hotels through the ages. They're also an expensive one too — the Las Vegas Review-Journal describes that even using the minifridge to store water can cost a customer up to $75. 

But paying $8 for water or $4 for a bag of M&Ms aside, there's actually another reason you may want to skip using your minifridge to store your groceries the next time you're on vacation.

According to Food & Wine, it's probably best to skip the minifridge in your hotel room altogether, as there's a chance it might not keep your food all that cold. This can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from low temperature to the electricity being shut off while you're not in the room.

As Lifehacker explains, your hotel fridge is cold enough to keep drinks "chilled" (and even then, they're moderately cold rather than ice cold). Hotel fridges can be 40 degrees or warmer — too warm for leftovers to be stored. This makes a majority of hotel refrigerators unsafe for food storage, considering the "danger zone" of food storage is between 40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can't exactly go and blame hotel managers or concierge for this. This may be the hotel's way of trying to provide peace and quiet for its guests. Hotel Management tells us that these minifridges can actually be a source of noise for guests, so some hotels order refrigerators that shut off for a certain period of time to prevent making noise. This means whatever food is in there is no longer being kept cool.

But there are some tricks you can do to keep your leftovers or groceries cold while you're staying in a hotel.

No matter what hotel you're staying in, you've probably seen an ice machine somewhere, either by the vending machines or a washing machine in a little nook. If you want to keep your perishable goods cold without risking them in the hotel minifridge, you're going to need to take full advantage of the ice machine.

As one tip from Reddit explains, get a large ziplock bag and put your perishables in them like milk, meat, or leftovers. Place the ziplock bag in the sink and, using ice from the hotel's ice machine, cover the bag with ice. You could even fill the bag with ice as much as you can to make sure what's inside is as exposed to as much cold as possible. This process will help keep your goods as cold as possible and, even if the ice melts, the cold water will still keep the bag cool.

Heaven Taste also says that, if you travel a lot, you could purchase a small cooler large enough to fit what perishable goods you have and fill that with ice. If it's insulated, even better. If your room has a balcony and the weather is cold out, you can also keep the goods out on the balcony in a plastic bag to keep them cold. 

However you keep your food cold, making sure you don't wake up to spoiled leftovers or room-temperature milk is always a good start to a vacation.