With food prices soaring and energy costs at record highs, it's time for an energy-saving tune up for your refrigerator and freezer. Keeping food fresh--while conserving energy--can bring a helpful boost to the strained pocketbook.

Try these tips to minimize energy use and save money on groceries:

• Fill the freezer, but give the fridge some air. The freezer works most efficiently when packed as full as possible. Need to fill in some space? Tuck extra ice for cold drinks or cold-packs for summer picnics into any empty space in the freezer.

  A black-out bonus: full freezers keep food frozen longer if a power outage occurs.

  The refrigerator is a different animal; it needs air circulation to keep food at an even temperature. Packing a refrigerator too tightly means some foods become too cold--and may even freeze--while others aren't kept cold enough for proper storage. Let the refrigerator breathe to keep food fresh longer.

Frugality: a noble value. Trouble is, if you've got a disorganized nature, the frugal life can seem daunting. How do tightwad friends remember all those prices, bargains, shopping bonanzas? Is the warehouse mega-pack a true bargain? When is a sale a sale?

Fight back with a powerful weapon from the frugal arsenal: the price book. First publicized by Amy Dacyczyn, author of the Tightwad Gazette book series, a price book is a power tool for tracking prices, products and sales. It's a simple tool to save time, money and supermarket stress.

Once again, I mark the coming of autumn with a clothing closet declutter. I wade into the closet and find the boxes of out-of-season clothing. Try everything on, skin itching at the touch of wool when the temperature's 80 degrees.

Sort the summer's keepers from items to donate. Look for "holes" and orphans in my autumn wardrobe. Count the upcoming dinners and fund-raisers, and divide them by the number of my cocktail dresses. Try, for the 900th time, to locate some good transitional outfits: cool enough for warm autumn days, but not too summery or too bare.

A closet declutter is more a ritual celebration of the change of seasons. It's a time for reflection, a time to face up to changing identities. Who's living in your clothes closet?

It's the time of the season: summer's heat begins to wane as shorter days, cooler temperatures herald the coming of autumn. What better time to head for those dim, dark, cool closets?

A closet clean-out clears the decks for the new season and gives even the most frazzled home manager a feeling of accomplishment.

Whether in the children's closets or in your own, follow these principles for efficient, organized clothing storage:

Autumn days are long and lazy? Not for today's busy families. Between work, children's activities, and vacation plans, even breezy fall days don't seem long enough to get everything done at home.

There's a solution for busy times. Just as your body needs a "minimum daily allowance" of vitamins and minerals, an organized home needs a minimum of maintenance and attention to keep running smoothly.

Think of this as a Magic Minimum: a short list of essential household tasks. It's a bottom-line list of chores and activities necessary to keep things running at a basic level.

With a working Magic Minimum plan, the household stays afloat, even when time is short.