Freezer - operator error

Way more than you need to know about our refrigerating and freezing problems:

If you go to Alicia and Justin's blog, you can see the pictures of the freezer the day they thawed it out. It sits in our upstairs -right as you come in the front door and all spring and summer and fall, the sun shines on it in the afternoon, in the warmest part of the day.

The freezer was supposed to be smaller and fit next to the refrigerator in the kitchen, but we didn't measure, and it was a rush job to buy it 3 years ago - Brian was on the way home with a bunch of moose meat and we already had 2 full freezers. so we ran up to Home Despot and got the biggest freezer we could afford - which had always worked for us before. We just didn't know that they made freezers bigger now.

It is kind of timely that this issue came to light this week. The reason we have to replace the kitchen floor, is that Alicia and I had tried to move the fridge and the giant freezer into place by ourselves and we gouged up the kitchen floor, really badly. We used to have a freezer in that spot in the kitchen and we just couldn't understand why this one wouldn't fit. So we just kept dragging them in and out and arranging them until we had ruined the floor and ended up putting the freezer in the living room next to the front door.

Not that convenient at Christmas time because that is where the Christmas tree is supposed to go. But it is handy to have a freezer on the main level of the house when it is time to cook.

So this year while Brian was hunting, we knew we had to defrost both big freezers to make room for the new meat (which he didn't get)... we hadn't looked in the freezer in the living room for a while because it was such a pain to relocate the duct tape every time.... so it was quite a shock when we opened it and it looked like one giant ice cube.

So we went back to Home Despot and talked to them about getting a new gasket or a new door for the freezer, because obviously, it was malfunctioning. They gave us a number to call and a booklet of how to get a hold of the company. Then Alicia went and tracked down the warranty book to find the warranty and the model information = and right there, it said it was supposed to be defrosted at least once a year, more often if ice formed on the shelves and such.

I had NO IDEA that they still made freezers that had to be defrosted. TOTALLY SHOCKED ! ! ! but then it all made sense. Ever since we got this freezer, the ice built up on the shelves and on the food and we thought it was just because we had to buy a cheap freezer and had gotten an off brand we had never heard of and because it was in the sunny window. Boy, is my face red.... Redder even now, because I had thought about defrosting it, but didn't know what to do with all the melting ice in the middle of my living room carpet... Come to find out, there is a hose underneath freezers now, and the water just drains into a pan that you empty, no water flooding all over the floor.

SIGH

So now, where the freezer has been for 3 years, we have this beautiful tile floor that Justin is laying (again, check Alicia and Justin's blog). And we all like the look without the freezer sitting there, so we are going to take the freezer downstairs and empty it out and put it in the kitchen and then take all the food out of the freezer which is sitting in the middle of the dining room now and take it downstairs and put it where the littler freezer sits in the food storage room. It's all very over whelming, but in the end, we will have a freezer in the kitchen and a beautiful new tile floor and a place for the Christmas tree and most importantly, we now possess the knowledge and skill to defrost. hehehehe

One of the next big appliances we are hoping to replace is the refrigerator - it is the last appliance we bought 15 years ago. If we have a free standing freezer in the kitchen, we want to replace the classic fridge with a free standing refrigerator. It doesn't make any sense to have that little freezer above the fridge if you have a full freezer right next to it. Our friends have the two different appliances, and we really like the functionality of it. But, I still want to get a new satellite dish and have to get the new crown for my broken tooth, so it probably won't be this month. I would say with my PFD next year, but if the stock market keeps dropping like a giant boulder off a tall cliff, our PFD will be like 20 cents, next year.

Happy FALL to everyone. Hope you don't get snowed on today like we are supposed to. BRRRRRRR