“When we had the fridge, we were eating a lot of prepared food from the grocery store,” she said. But the cooler has limited room, and the freezer is for meat and vegetables. Without the extra storage, Ms. Muston finds herself cooking more — which requires more time and forethought because items from the freezer must be thawed.

Asked whether the couple had to give up any cherished foods, Ms. Muston sighed. “Cold beer,” she said. “Scott can’t come home and grab a cold beer out of the fridge anymore. He has to put it in the cooler and wait an hour.”

For the most part, though, the couple seems to have made a smooth transition to life without a refrigerator, something others have tried but failed to do. Beth Barnes, 29, who works for the Kentucky Bar Association, unplugged the refrigerator in her apartment in Frankfort last May to be “a little radical,” she said. After reading online comments from others without a fridge, she learned she could move condiments to a pantry, and that butter can remain unrefrigerated for a week or more. The main concern was how to store dairy products, a major part of her diet.

Ms. Barnes decided to use a cooler, which she refilled daily during the summer with ice that she brought home from an ice machine at her office. That worked fine until she began to travel out of town for her job this fall, and the system hit a snag.

Image O PIONEER To reduce their carbon footprint, Rachel Muston and her husband havent used a refrigerator in a year. A small basement freezer and a cooler are all they need. Credit... Colin Rowe for The New York Times

In the end she compromised and bought a minifridge. “I could drop the refrigerator completely if I had a milkman,” she said. “I might eventually try it again if I ever figure out the milk situation.”

MANY environmentalists — even many who think nothing of using recycled toilet paper or cut the thermostat to near-arctic levels — see fridge-free living as an extreme choice or an impractical and excessive goal.