Leftovers

It took a few days for our refrigerator to convince us it was really breaking down. Actually, it had been clunking along for a couple of years. Every time the compressor would stop, it gave a “ka-clunk” sound. But it still worked.

When it stopped ka-clunking, it wasn’t working so much. It was still cooling, but not enough. After a few ka-clunk-less days, we finally put our food in four or five ice chests in the dining room and waited for our new refrigerator.

The new one came and it was broken. Our food spent more time in the ice chests. The replacement refrigerator came and it worked. Yea! After six hours or so, we started putting our food in.

Well, some of it. After all those days in the warmer-than-usual refrigerator and all those days in ice chests, maybe we didn’t really want to keep all that food.

Empty containers stacked on the counter

Ready for the next set of soups.

Out went the leftovers. Out went the eggs, meat and mayonnaise. Out went the mushy (formerly frozen) soup. Out went the jars with last year’s expiration date. (Oops.) It just wasn’t worth getting sick or even the worry about maybe getting sick. Hubby took the rejects to the compost pile and I washed all the containers that we separated from their refrigerator and freezer contents.
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I came home from work the next day — to a normally cooled refrigerator, no less! — and hubby had emptied the dishwasher. And left all these containers on the counter top. Because . . . after 12 1/2 years of living in this house, he “doesn’t know where they go.” I guess he thought they lived in the freezer permanently.

Now, if we were talking about those containers and me, I’d say there were too many to put on the container shelf in our kitchen cabinet and that maybe I’d have to consider making some soup right away (not going to happen) or putting some of the containers in the freezer, empty. But we’re not talking about me, are we now?

(Last refrigerator post. I hope.)

Refrigerator Woes

The refrigerator woes continued. I related Part 1 to you in Law of Nature, when the refrigerator first started breaking down.

We bought a new refrigerator and it was delivered two days later. The delivery people called to tell us they were on their way and they arrived earlier than scheduled. They removed the old refrigerator and installed the new one. They said to wait 12 hours before putting anything inside.

We waited. We waited six hours and the refrigerator hadn’t started cooling down yet. Went to bed, got up the next morning and it was just as warm in the refrigerator as out. Five hours later, still hadn’t started to cool down. Hubby called Lowe’s and they sent out another new refrigerator that same day, in the afternoon.

Tupperware canister on top of a refrigerator

Old Yeller

It was installed by the time I got home from work and had already cooling. That’s more like it!

Even though we waited to put anything inside, we put some things on it: the requisite yellow Tupperware canister, with cookies for hubby.

Life is good.

Law of Nature

It’s a law of nature at our house that any appliance breakdown will happen on a holiday weekend. Fortunately, we’re not under the black cloud that ensures that this happens every holiday weekend, but still . . . .

Thursday it seemed that maybe our refrigerator was not feeling so well. By Friday, that was a confirmed diagnosis and its condition steadily worsened. And, of course, it was a holiday weekend.

Also, anytime one of our dogs gets bitten by a rattlesnake, it will be on a weekend when just walking into the emergency vet clinic costs enough to . . . well, buy a new refrigerator! Sometimes two or three refrigerators, even. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the emergency vet clinic is there. None of our dogs died from the rattlesnake bites. But couldn’t that happen during the week, early in the morning so we could go to our regular vet? Or even better, is there a way to prevent rattlesnake bites altogether, other than moving into a downtown condo, that is? But I digress; back to my refrigerator woes.

Over three days, I spent a noticeable amount of time on the Internet, shopping for a refrigerator much like the one we have: white, top freezer, with a freezer light, no automatic ice maker, no water dispenser, 21-22 cubic feet. How hard can it be? (That’s the clue that it’s always harder than I thought it should be.)

It was hard. As it turns out, those types of refrigerators are still made. The problem is navigating retailers’ web sites to figure out which models have which features. Some web sites have photos of the interior of the refrigerator and the freezer. Nice. Some have photos of just the refrigerator part. Some have photos of only the outside and an abbreviated list of features! Really? They want me to decide on a refrigerator just based on the outside of the doors and a brief summary? I don’t think so.

The sticking point turned out to be the freezer light. Our current freezer has one. Therefore, I think our next one should have one. This is not a default feature. Some freezers have them; some don’t. Then there was the automatic ice maker or water dispenser. I could easily find a top freezer model with a freezer light as long as I paid for the other features that I don’t want.

This wore me out. Besides my online research, I made some phone calls (a hearkening back to the olden days) and I even drove to three — count them three — retailers to look at floor models.

I’m looping back now to the point about it being a holiday weekend. This is a special holiday weekend when it comes to appliances. In Texas, if you buy an Energy Star appliance during the Memorial Day weekend, the purchase is tax-free. That means that everyone who is affected by the holiday-weekend-appliance-breakdown curse is out and about.

Finally I decided on a refrigerator. I took a friend’s advice and bought a bottom-freezer model. With a freezer light. And an automatic ice maker, which we will ignore. (Can’t have everything. Or in this case, can’t have only what I want.) I got lucky about the delivery schedule, considering that I bought the refrigerator on the last day of the three-day holiday weekend and everyone else got on the delivery schedule before me. I didn’t get the “next day” delivery time slot, but one day after that.

That will give me time to discard the science experiments growing in my refrigerator, which this time around aren’t my fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.