Beware those new fangled appliances!
Yeah, so…….. As I was saying about those appliances……They sure don’t make ’em like they used to! I remember when I was a kid, we had the same refrigerator when we moved to our new house when I was eight, that mom and dad had bought second-hand when they were married. It looked like it came off the ark, but it worked like a charm. Mom didn’t like that she had to defrost the freezer every so often, but there was never any problem with keeping stuff cold. If it wasn’t for the fact that it wouldn’t fit under the upper cupboards in the new kitchen, mom would probably still have that old fridge!
When Paul and I moved into our new house, about fifteen years ago, we bought two sets of brand spanking, top-of-the-line, with all the new gizmos and gadgets included appliances. Everything was state-of-the-art, energy-efficient, non-polluting, space-age technology, self cleaning, self defrosting, labour saving, expensive as fuck devices that were going to revolutionize our modern home. Excellent! I thought, as I marvelled at the double door wonder with the cantilevered shelves, adjustable moisture control food bins and water and ice dispensers in the door, that was our new refrigerator.
Everything swung along fine for the first five years, even though at Christmas, the thing was stuffed so full that you couldn’t get another pickle in it! The double door design meant that the shelves were a lot smaller in the fridge compartment than in a regular two door design, and the freezer compartment was so narrow, you couldn’t even get a frozen pizza in it. The thing was supposed to be zero clearance, which meant that it could be installed in a cupboard surround that only gave it about an inch of airspace all around and to the back, where the cooling system was. I had always heard that fridges required good air circulation for optimal performance, but who was I to question the modern appliance engineers?
To make a long story short, we had the appliance repair guy in at least a half dozen times, the last in which he replaced the whole wiring harness in the back of the unit. Luckily, we had made the smart choice of putting down ceramic floor in the kitchen, and every time the fridge had given trouble, spewing water out onto the kitchen floor, it had caused minimal damage. What happened in the inlaw apartment was another story…….
Stay tuned for Water works in Nanny Land, part two of About those Appliances.
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