Where should I put the mini fridge in the car?passenger seat?Trunk?

Affordable bedroom-quiet mini-fridge with a freezer?

• I have an old hand-me-down mini-fridge in my bedroom that I use to store cold water and medications. Husband for Christmas thoughtfully bought me a new one with a freezer compartment so that I could keep ice packs up in our bedroom as well, yay! We plugged it in Christmas afternoon and disaster: new one is SO LOUD! Let it settle through the day, but both had awful trouble getting to sleep, and he ended up getting up in the middle of the night and just unplugging it because it kept on cycling in a frequent pattern that he couldn't handle. Looking for recommendations because it turns out that every fridge for sale on the internet has least one review saying it's WHISPER SILENT and another saying it's THE LOUDEST EVER. Does a quiet mini-fridge even exist? Is our new one generally thought to be quiet but got busted in transit? It sat in-place for quite some time as a mysteriously large present, then was moved up a flight of stairs, and we don't think we bonked it around much: nothing is obviously loose. Everything that Google tells me is contradictory. The biggest problem with the new one seems to be not that it has a loud noise as it shifts cycles (the old one made a *thunk* and long rattley *hummmmmm* when it kicked off cycles too, although new one is perhaps 25% louder and doesn't seem to taper off in volume the way the old one did), but rather that its cycle seems to be on the order of tens of minutes rather than multiple hours as the old one. Old one: GE 3.2 cubic foot compact fridge New one: SPT 2.5 cubic foot mini fridge Criteria for not just going back to the old one and bidding my dreams of convenient ice packs goodbye: * Space inside for 2 good-size Nalgene bottles and some assorted medications (we could completely go down to a tiny cube like I had in university, if it met the rest of the criteria) * Freezer compartment big enough to hold an ice pack or two (think able to hold 2-4 standard DVD cases) * Either a tiny cube that we could relocate to the bathroom, OR a 2-4 cubic foot mini-fridge that's quiet enough at the loudest part of its cycle to sleep through, or is on a long enough cycle to not have it be a significant problem (one loud noise every 6-8 hours we could live with) * Buyable in the Seattle area or reasonably shippable-to that area, for "a reasonable price" (anything over a couple hundred dollars is probably too much; apparently there's some sweet silent fridges for sale in the UK, but I don't think I can countenance that) * Attractive would be nice, but the current one is a bit on the dingy white side so that's not too much of a worry, really. Suggestions from the hive mind? Would also appreciate any tips on how to check ahead of time what the volume level of a fridge will be, as it doesn't seem to be something included in most specs. Would it be worthwhile to try to listen to one in a store or would the ambient noise be too distracting? Etc.

• Answer:

  I am always unplugging the ones in hotel rooms, even though usually they are reasonably quiet. Reviews for the one you bought mention "a little too loud" as a drawback. So probably it is what it is. Would this work for you: Fill any unused space in the freezer with those blue ice freezer packs. Fill any unused space in the fridge with something similar that will hold a lot of "cold", ie., thermal mass. Could be stone, for example, or just jugs of water. When you go to bed, turn the entire unit off. Turn back on when you rise. The extra stuff helps keep the inside nice and chilly. You can test this by sticking a thermometer in and seeing how much the temp rises overnight. Consider building some extra insulation around the unit, as well.