Kitchen: A Cheesy Solution

Cheese can be very expensive, and so I stock up on it when it is on sale...some cheeses freeze more readily than others.  
I like to purchase shredded cheeses in 8 oz packages...no more than 16 oz packages.  The pre-paks tend to thaw and remain shredded, not clumped up.
American cheese (not the cheese food) was the one I was having the biggest problem with.  We liked a certain brand that was sold in 5 pound bricks!  While the cheese would stay "good" for a long period of time, it eventually would get a crusty film on it.  It was still "good", not spoiled, but the texture was not so good.  Beside that, the amount of space a 5 pound brick of American cheese takes up is quite a lot in a small side by side refrigerator/freezer.
I tried dividing up the cheese into manageable half-pound packages and freezing...but there was a problem at the time of thawing...frost crystals had built up on the surface of the cheese and as it thawed in the refrigerator that moisture would make the exposed surface areas soggy.  
To prevent that from happening, I found that wrapping an absorbent paper towel around the cheese just prior to placing it in the fridge to thaw--all the moisture was absorbed into the toweling and no surface "sog" happened.
I suppose I could invest in one of those vacuum sealers, but I don't want to bring in any more equipment into my already inundated kitchen--let alone the expense of the bags themselves.
A simple, inexpensive solution, using common sense.