it's national clean your refrigerator day

canon digital rebel xsi

Today is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. No idea who started it, but I cleaned out the fridge anyway. To be honest, it needed it. I didn't find anything nasty - that happened weeks ago when I found a half of jalapeno bagel the in-laws left in the door because they won't throw any food away! And now there is plenty of room for that turkey to defrost next week.

As I wiped down the shelves, I was remembering when I was around 10, and we moved into a small rental house. It didn't come with a refrigerator, so we bought a second-hand one. It was brown, and huge. It had a freezer on the bottom. You stepped on a pedal to open the freezer. It was pretty clever, especially when you were trying to put the ice cube trays in it.

The first night we had the fridge, it made a very strange loud noise. It sounded like a space ship had landed in our kitchen. It woke us up. We ran out into the kitchen to see what was happening. It took a few nights, but we learned to get used to it.

It would seem that there was a problem with the fridge (perhaps something to do with that noise), but there wasn't much we could do. The worst of it was that it made ice - in the bottom of the refrigerator! What a pain that was to clean.

Somehow that job fell to me. I hated doing it, and probably made it a more difficult process letting it go for too long. I remember one afternoon spent trying everything I could think of to get a solid one-inch block of ice that had grown under the vegetable bins.

I tried melting the ice with pots of hot water. The idea was boil some water in a pot, and then place the entire pot onto the ice. No idea where I came up with this idea. When it didn't work very well, I probably tried pouring hot water on the ice, making an even bigger mess.

Next I got out the hammer and screwdriver, in an attempt to chisel away at the block of ice. I did finally get a piece of it out, but it took what felt like forever. Then all the ice sat in the sink to melt, while I mopped up the mess on the floor.

We kept that fridge until I started high school. We moved to an apartment that had a fridge. But even if it hadn't, that monster would not have fit in the allotted space. I was so thankful to not have to defrost the fridge any longer.



on the night stand :: Princess Hyacinth by Florence Perry Heide.