Fridge

I'll cut right to the chase, my wife sort of demanded a new refrigerator this morning. I say sort of, because although it came out as a demand, I managed to head it off for a while. I'll explain.
We have a fairly long and colorful history with appliances dedicated to keeping food cool. Our first refrigerator came with the house. It was not good at it's job. It was old and tired and on a good day, it would keep the food in the bottom cool, and the food in the top slightly below freezing. This was all dependent on not opening the doors too many times, it couldn't handle too many cool cycles. It was also dependent on the doors actually closing, something which it did with reluctance. At some point in the history of the fridge something had happened to make the doors swell a bit. Whether this was due to water in the insulation, or corrosion, or some other factor, we never really knew. The result of the fault was that the doors became increasingly hard to shut over time. At first they wouldn't stick unless you pressed them closed. They then progressed into a fairly elaborate ritual of slamming to get them to stay. Eventually even this failed and I was forced into ever more elaborate systems of improvising.
The first system, one that worked quite well I might add, was a piece of wood that was wedged between the handles and the doors. Imagine the board that keeps the castle gates closed against attack and you're on the right track. This wasn't just any piece of wood though, it was engineered to fit perfectly in the handles and wedge the doors shut. I was quite proud of it until it stopped working. For some reason, the handles stretched out, the door swelled even more, I don't really know, we had to move to heavier artillery, and by heavier, I really mean heavier, a cement block. Yes, part of opening our fridge for a time involved moving a cement block out of the way, getting what you needed, and moving the block back. This really did prove to be quite effective, however, it wasn't enough.
We had a baby. The baby had to eat. The boobs went to work and left the milk at home, and proper refrigeration became a serious priority. The fridge would keep leftovers for a week, but it wasn't the 40 or so degrees that was recommended for storage. On top of that, the freezer was supposed to be as close to zero as you can get it for longer term storage. Our freezer was closer to the suggested refrigerator temperature than it was to zero. Aside from the cement block issue, the fridge had to go.
We bought a new fridge. A glorious white beauty that produced ample cold and would close every time. Life was good. Sort of. It did produce cold. It did close. That was good. The problem came when it decided that it was time to activate it's self defrost mode. It stopped it's cooling, heated up the coils, melted the frost on them, and deposited all of the melt water right into the freezer. For some reason the tube that leads from the defrost tray in the freezer down to the catch tray on the bottom freezes. Not every time, but often enough that I (or my wife when I'm gone) has to chip out the skating rink on the bottom of the freezer and use hot water and a turkey baster to create a free passage for additional water. I could have probably called some sort of refrigerator repair man, but someday I'll tell you the story of our chest freezer and my still smoldering hatred for repair men. As long as it makes cold, I decided that I'll chip out the ice.
So that's what I've been doing. Every two to 6 weeks, the freezer will freeze over and I'll get out my implements and I'll fix it. For ten years I've been doing this and it really doesn't bother me. The garage has a hole in the roof the size of a Volkswagen and the dog poops on the floor at night. I have bigger problems than a little ice once a month. This morning when my wife mentioned that the freezer was frozen again, she also mentioned that, dammit, she works a good job and makes enough money that if she wants a fridge that doesn't require constant maintenance then by god she should get one! I like being married, so I agreed. In principle anyway.
In reality, it's just not a good time to get a new fridge. Next fall all of the kids will be in school and I'm going to address that hole in the garage roof. In fact, I'm going to address the whole garage. Top to bottom, a garage makeover. We've been talking about this a lot. I'm even planing to build an office for my wife out there. Someplace nice and quiet with a lock on the door where she can go and do work if she needs to. An oasis of calm. A sanctuary if you will. It would be fantastic to have a refrigerator out in the garage for extra food storage with our growing kids. If we're going to have a fridge in the house and one in the garage, then we should buy a new one for the house and put the old one that needs to be defrosted manually in the garage. The hitch with this whole thing is that if we buy a new fridge now then we don't have any place to put the old fridge until the garage is ready. Right now the garage is filled with car parts and race tires. Really important stuff.
So, as I explained to my wife this morning, I love the idea of buying a new fridge. I really do. I just think we should wait until I have a place in the garage for the old one. Somewhat surprisingly, she agreed with my logic. If I can keep her from smothering me in my sleep, we're totally getting a new fridge. Later.