We Have a Refrigerator!

I think a refrigerator is definitely one of those things that we tend to take for granted.  Sure, we use it every day, and it’s probably the biggest thing in the kitchen, but as long as it’s doing its job, it’s not something you really think about.  Take it away, though, and that’s very noticeable.

I’m very happy to say that our new refrigerator arrived on Thursday as scheduled.  And it is delightfully cold!  That is definitely the most important part.  Aesthetically, I’m not one hundred percent sure I love the stainless steel.  I think I may prefer white appliances overall.  Though I’m never quick to embrace change, so I may eventually love the stainless steel.  The front of the refrigerator isn’t magnetic, which I do like.  A lot.  I think it looks much neater without a bunch of stuff on the front of it.  The sides are magnetic, so we can still put some things on it. 

I love that the freezer has a solid shelf instead of a wire one.  The old one had a wire shelf, and it seemed like things were always getting caught in it.

This refrigerator only has two drawers, so I’m probably going to end up getting some more bins or baskets to help keep things organized.  I’m very happy that the two drawers can be set for fruits or vegetables.  I’m hoping that will help prevent the drawers from becoming a produce graveyard. 

The door shelves in the new fridge seem sturdier than the ones in the old fridge.  Though, that may just be because they’re not very full yet.  Time will tell, I guess. 

The butter/dairy section in this one is bigger than it was in our old one, which is good.  We don’t actually keep butter here; we use it for Howard’s insulin and any other pet medication or food that needs to be refrigerated.  So it’s very convenient that it’s a little bigger than the old one.

And that concludes the grand tour of our new refrigerator. 

I’m still very excited to have a working refrigerator again.  And the silver lining to losing everything from the old refrigerator is that I’m starting from a blank slate.  There are currently no “oops, I really shouldn’t have bought that” items to contend with and no “yes, we did have an opened container of XYZ, so now we have two (or more)” issues.  Now I just need to keep it that way!

How do you keep your refrigerator and/or freezer organized; bins, baskets, drawers?  Have you found a great system? 

This Was Supposed to Be a Thursday 13

Last Thursday, I had most of a Thursday 13 post written and ready to go. Then our fridge died, and my evening derailed. For the sake of having good pictures for this post,

I’ve kept the two Thursday 13 things with the best pictures.

1. The lilac bush seems to be blooming again! It bloomed, those blooms died, and now it seems to be blooming again. I love the lilac blooms, so I’m thrilled.

2. We’ve had a random lily pop up in the front yard. We’ve worked very hard over the years to get rid of all of the lilies in our yard because they’re extremely toxic to cats. Our cats are indoor cats, but a few of them run out occasionally, and we worry about Duke bringing anything in on his fur.This one is in the front yard, though, and Duke only plays in the backyard, so we may let it stay. I’m not sure yet.

Now the fridge saga, with a few random pictures sprinkled in because it needs something positive. In hindsight, it was probably dying for several days, but because I’m very good at denial, I didn’t realize it. There were a few bags of lettuce that went very bad before their expiration date. That happens, sometimes, though, so I didn’t think too much about it. Some sweet tea got rancid. This should have gotten my attention because unless I’m out of town or extremely sick, sweet tea does not sit around long enough to go rancid here. I told myself I’d had more Coke than usual, so the tea sat longer than usual, and maybe it wasn’t even really that rancid because I’m pretty picky about sweet tea. I told you I’m good at denial.

What should have been my next major clue was that a few things in the fridge didn’t feel as cold as they should. I decided that maybe we had bumped the temperature control, so I reset it for the coldest setting. Then we had a busy couple of days where we both got home from work very late, so we opted for takeout one night and going out the next night. I like to think that if I’d cooked one of those nights, I would have finally admitted that something was very, very wrong with the fridge.

By Thursday afternoon, there was no question that the fridge was warm, not cool, and definitely not cold. Nick looked at it to see if he could figure anything out with it. The freezer was partially working; some things were still frozen solid, and some were completely melted. It was very weird.

We were able to save about half of what was in the freezer. We threw out anything that seemed questionable at all. We put some of what was savable in our chest freezer and gave some popsicles and ice cream to our neighbors. They were very kindly storing Howard’s insulin pen in their fridge for us and loaned us coolers so we could try to save things from the fridge.

My sister's cat Dobby

Unfortunately, every single thing in the fridge had to be thrown away. It was just too warm to risk trying to keep any of it. I’m trying very hard not to tally up how much money that was because I think that would be very depressing. I don’t think you really think about how much is in the fridge until you have to haul ALL of it out to the trash; condiments, milk, yogurt, cheese (including fresh mozzarella), fruit, vegetables, eggs,butter, etc.

Once we had everything emptied out, Nick defrosted the freezer with a hairdryer, and we reset everything. Since we’d already lost everything from the fridge, it seemed worth it to see if it was a case of the freezer being too stuffed and something freezing up. The neighbors mentioned that something like that had happened with theirs a few times. So we decided it was worth a try.

We went out to Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy a thermometer to put in the fridge and to look at refrigerators in case we ended up needing a new one. We bought a thermometer and found a fridge we really liked with the right measurements to fit in our kitchen. Our house is small, and the fridge cutout in our kitchen is very small. Well over half of the refrigerators available weren’t even close to being small enough to fit, so we had a very limited selection to choose from.

The one we found was perfect. It was stainless steel, which Nick really wanted, and Icame around to after our neighbor Lori showed me how easy it was to clean. It had the freezer drawer on the bottom with very well-designed storage within that. The top fridge part was double doors with great storage, and all of the shelves could be moved. There are probably hundreds of ways you can rearrange the shelves in this fridge. It was perfect.

By Friday morning, we knew that our fridge was definitely dead. On the one hand, we weren’t planning on a new fridge, so that wasn’t great, but with the perfect fridge justwaiting at Home Depot, it wasn’t terrible.

Our house and our neighbors’ house are pretty much identical. They were built in the 50s, and the only real differences, other than color, are additions and improvements made over the years. They’ve been in theirs much longer than we’ve been in ours, so we’ve copied a lot of ideas from them, and they’ve come over and measured where lightswitches and things are when they’ve been undoing a renovation. It’s very convenient. When I took Howard’s insulin pen over, I noticed that they have a double-door refrigerator, so I asked Lori if they were happy with it since our kitchens arebasically the same. She said she wouldn’t get it again because you can’t open the door on the right side all the way, and that makes it inconvenient when you’re trying to get a large pan in or out.

We ended up going over and measuring their fridge and fridge cutout in the kitchen. We learned that our houses aren’t quite as identical as we thought. We have the same square footage, but our living room is a few inches bigger than theirs, and their kitchen is a few inches bigger than ours. Those inches all seem to be in the fridge cutout.

We decided we needed to measure how far we could get the door to open on the perfect fridge and to take a 9x13 pan with us to see how it was to get it in and out. I was fairly confident that a few inches wouldn’t matter that much and was still thinking of all of the wonderful ways to organize the perfect fridge. Fortunately, Nick has a much better sense of spatial judgment than I do. He measured again, factoring in a hinge that we hadn’t noticed swung out quite so far the night before. That’s when all of my daydreams of the perfect fridge were shattered. It wasn’t even close to doable.

If you have a very small space for your fridge, I highly recommend measuring it twice and looking for any parts that swing out or take up any more room before you explore the interior and all of the wonderful drawers and shelves. Don’t get attached to a fridge you can’t have. Trust me on this one.

After multiple trips back and forth between Home Depot and Lowe’s, lots of measuring, re-measuring, and trying out different shelves for the 9x13 pan, we finally decided onand bought a refrigerator. Let’s just say that Nick’s grandmother was right to suggest naming him after a saint, and his mom was right to think it was a good idea. I was annoying myself by the time we were finished. I’m sure it took the patience of a saint to buy a refrigerator with me.

The new fridge is supposed to be delivered on Thursday. It’s stainless steel (which Nick really wanted, and I finally came around to after seeing how easy it is to clean), has the handles in the tops of the doors instead of the outside (which Nick really wanted), has two separate produce drawers (which I really wanted), and has a solid, not wire, shelf in the freezer (which I really wanted). So, while it’s not perfect, it does have features that we both wanted. And, at this point, almost any cold refrigerator sounds like a very good one.

Of course, now that we don’t have a functioning refrigerator, all I want to do is cook elaborate meals with lots of ingredients that need to be refrigerated and lots of leftovers.

For now, we’re sticking with very simple meals made with things we can safely keep in coolers and canned foods.

The trash was picked up today, so at least now we’re not seeing all of the bags of food we had to throw away every time we go outside. That was just depressing.

On the positive side, we’re planning to have panini a few nights this week, which is always good. And we’re getting a blank slate with the refrigerator; no multiple jars/bottles of the same thing opened, no sauces we aren’t crazy about but feel bad throwing away, and definitely nothing expired or past its prime. A massive refrigerator reorganization is a daunting task, but starting from zero makes it a lot easier.

Frankie

So what about you? Would you have worried about the fridge a lot sooner than I did?Have you ever had to throw away everything from your refrigerator? Do you have astainless steel fridge, and if you do, do you like it?