After 1 Year With the Tefal Cheese Cellar - I Hate It! (Review)

So I'm not going to bury the lead here - just going to cut to the chase: we had the Tefal Cheese Cellar for about a year, maybe more actually, and honestly, I think it was a poor purchase to the point where I'm going to throw it out.

There's technically nothing wrong with the one we have. It's still usable and we could throw it back in the fridge if we wanted to. The issue? I just don't want to, and I feel it's actually:

1. A pointless product,
2. A waste of space,
3. Impractical,
4. Not worth the cost,
5. Better off being replaced by a cheap, everyday product that does its job substantially better than it, and worst of all, it's
6. Literally not even worth keeping because of how counter intuitive of a product it has proven itself to be to me.

Think I'm being harsh? Especially after how many thousands of positive reviews it's gotten? Fine, but hear me out.

The Tefal Cheese Cellar's purpose is to keep your cheese fresh until the next time you eat it. To regulate humidity so that your cheese doesn't go moldy. To store your cheese.

The first and foremost problem as I see it when it comes to this box?

It takes up so much space and yet simultaneously, you can barely put any cheese in it.

So it's tall. Incredibly tall.

Space saving wise it is abysmal, since it's the kind of thing you can technically put atop another thing, but precariously, and it won't be much fun to pick up, because it doesn't close, the top just rests on the bottom portion, so if they slide off each other, that's coming apart and the insides are spilling out, easy.

But back to the storage space waste.

Let's say you have a stack of food storage containers in your fridge.

You can put the Tefal Cheese Cellar on top of those other storage containers, but not beneath them, because of the way it's designed (you need to have the filter exposed and the filter is on the top of the product).

Okay but.. you can't really stack too much beneath it because it literally takes up so much space vertically.

But that's also.. space you can't use...

You can't stack cheeses on top of each other because as soon as you pull this thing out of your fridge, as I said earlier, since it doesn't close, it practically falls apart.

Stack this thing full and you're in for a disaster if you mishandle it on the way out of the fridge, or if the cheese shifted, while you open it, down the cheese comes like dominos.

Why isn't it long and flat? So that it's not such a space waster? What kind of cheese is as tall as this box? Needs this much "clearance" on top of it?

It should be inverted. Should have had a deep base, like a tray with high sides, that then had a filter in the side of it so you could stack it on top or beneath other things, or even have multiples of these stacked on top of each other (I know, genius idea, you should have hired me first, Tefal).

If this was the case, I'd keep this product. If it could even stay shut without me having to fumble as I take it out of the fridge I may have kept this product.

But instead it has this tray-like base that makes it seem like, "Oh, you just take the top off and serve the cheese" - yeah you can't, because it has enough of a rim that it's kind of in the way while you're cutting the cheese.

So it's not got enough space to store many cheeses, cross that out. It's not got enough usability as an actual cutting board to use that way. What exactly is it's purpose?

It's the equivalent of a hyper expensive food storage container, but that's worse at it's job than a food storage container, cause it lets in so much new air that I do actually believe cheese in this gets more moldy than if you put it in a food storage container.

Okay, it reduces humidity because of the filter. So? Just put down a paper towel to line your food storage container before putting your cheese in and leave the cheese in the wrapper so it doesn't touch.

It allows your cheese to mature? Yeah not so much.

Leave your cheese out if you want it to mature and then put it in the fridge when it's ripe enough, or go the opposite way (the sane, normal way) and take the cheese out for an adequate of time before you're ready to eat it.

I don't understand how a product can fail at it's purpose so hard. I really don't.

So I'm chucking it in the bin, which kills me because I hate wasting, let alone a product I bought for a dedicated reason that I was really hoping would be good and literally hung on to for ages just because of how much it cost me.

If you'll notice, the corner on mine is chipped.

That's because it's so fricking awkward to hold and if you drop it, the corner will chip off yours too. Almost guaranteed.

Actually, like an idiot, as soon as I bought this - before trying it for long enough - I told my brother to buy one of these and his chipped too. What on earth? Such poor product design it's unbearable.

But again, I see what they were going for. The bottom was meant to be a chopping board.

But it doesn't work out so well that way, and honestly you don't want to get scratches on this thing or it looks bad (not that it's the most aesthetically pleasing to begin with, honestly, it's pretty ugly).

I am running out of things to say and still not a positive word has been spoken about this product.

You won't hear one from me because honestly I think this cheese cellar was designed with literally no concept of the end result or what type of person will use it.

We eat a lot of cheese. That's why the cheese needs to go into a cheese cellar like this and be stored for another time. Because we like to have a bunch of different cheeses all at once.

But I cannot store a lot of cheese in this product, and I cannot stack one on top of the other to have the option of having more cheese in a product like this, and it in my opinion doesn't even keep all that cheese as fresh as a regular food storage container, so again I say, WHY?

Okay. Enough. I have your fix. I have the solution to your problems, all you have to do is this:

Grab a bunch of Tatay food storage containers. They are the best.

Whatever size you want. They stack well, they're dishwasher friendly, easy to clean by hand, they don't let air in. They're perfect for nearly any food storage use you can imagine and come in a bunch of different sizes.

And then stack them in your fridge. Or get one massive one. Or get one for soft cheese one for hard cheese.

Or get one big food storage container (like I do) store without a lid, on display, any unopened cheeses then store your hard cheese that you've opened in a food storage container by Tatay that you flip over so you can literally see what's in there and how much of it  you have. There you go, I just saved you.

Don't by this. It's pointless. And impractical. And poorly designed. Nothing more needs to be said.