Well the ants were resolve as of last week. I have been very careful - I wash the dishes, etc immediately after we eat, then dry them and put them away, then dry the drying rack, dishpan and sink. So far, so good. (Fingers crossed.)
The refrigerator is a different story. I have spent weeks now watching the thermometer in it - it is a remote read so I don’t have to open the door. I understand that there is some play in the temperature of the fridge and I sort of know how it works. For food purposes it has to be kept at 40F or less and for insulin related reasons it has to be kept at 36 F or higher. It can go as high as 46F, but since the food has a lower top limit, I basically have to keep the fridge (house or RV) between 36 and 40 F. I try to keep both at 38F and between 37 and 39F to allow some play or in case the thermometer is off.
I know how to adjust the temperature - turn the knob colder if the temperature is too high until the compressor just clicks on, it if too low then turn the knob just warmer so the compressor clicks off. I am at good at this. In the RV I have been known to jump to the back when we stop for gas to make a quick adjustment.
Recently our house refrigerator has been acting wrong. I look at the thermometer and it is 37F. I leave it. I look again maybe 10-15 minutes later and it is 40F. It should not jump that much that fast or without seemingly hitting any temperatures between. It is then hard to get the temperature back down to where it belongs. I am not adding large amounts of food at all, let alone food that is not already cold. I thought I was just missing the adjustments and started setting the timer in my mobile phone to go off every 15 or 20 minutes to remind me to check the timer. Still missed the jumps. Husband and I have been discussing what to do. For what a repair would cost, it would not pay.
So we have been looking refrigerators online and in stores. Since we have a small house, we have a small kitchen and a relatively small fridge. When we moved into this house 30 years ago we owned a refrigerator that we had used in our apartment and brought that with us. Sending the one that came with the house (from the prior owners) to the garage (which did not have electricity) where its main use was to have our, then, Christmas tree stored on top of it. One July 4th week we were away and came home and found that while we had been away the fridge had died. As we threw out most of what was in the fridge, we thought to and tried to plug in the fridge in the garage - it no longer worked. So we bought a new fridge.
For our apartment we had bought a 15 cu ft refrigerator. Due to confusion the company that we bought it from took about a week to deliver it to us - and they delivered an 18 cu ft one - with an ice maker and told us to keep both when I called that they were wrong. (Apparently they kept mixing us up with another customer which led to them claiming that originally they tried to deliver and I was not home - I was home and on the phone, by coincidence, at that time. We bought the fridge in 1982 for the apartment. I know this as I was working on a piece of embroidery at the time, worked on it all work while stuck in our apartment waiting, and it is, yes, dated 1982. I am not sure of when we bought the first one for this house or its size.
When we had our house treated for the bed bugs in 2009 we found afterwards that the refrigerator which we had replaced that one with was no longer working. Since we found several individual bottles of water in the fridge and its freezer which were not ours, so apparently the bed bug crew had stashed their water bottles in our fridge (it was a major heat treatment) and had been opening the doors all day - so our fridge died.
At that time we bought the fridge that is currently in our house. It is 20.9 cu ft. Like all of our other ones it is white and a top freezer. I did not particularly like a number of things about it, but we were in a rush and bought it - it has served us well.
Monday night we decided that we had to replace it. We both looked online and found that there seemed to be 3 possible replacements of about the same size. Tuesday we went to a major house/hardware chain to look at what they had. None of the 3 excited me. They had oddly arranged shelves (all were actually from different companies - not just the same company with different nameplates) and such. Husband had heard about fridges which allow one to set an actual temperature and the fridge will keep that temperature - not the usual turn the dial a little this way or that and stick a thermometer in the fridge to check the temperature. I found one that was “only” $300 more than what we were looking at - or to look at the extra price another way - it added the equivalent of 50% more of the price to the price. This was something he REALLY wanted. He had given me measurements at home before we went out and this one did not seem that much larger in size and we left it in consideration.
We then went to the other major house/hardware chain to see what they had. Basically the same, but the model that we had seen and husband was interested in, was slightly different - or at least it’s number was.
We have bought large appliances from both in the past and based on same decided that we wanted to buy from the first company, but decided to go a different store in the chain which was larger and “maybe” would have something different.
They did not. So I made the decision. As much as I would hate the fancier fridge - it was side by side and I was not even sure a turkey would fit on the tiny shelves and we had to take it in stainless as white add another 50% to the price, it made sense for the problem we have with keeping the temperature in such a small range. We bought it. To be delivered and set up on Friday.
We then went home and measured the front door - it was about an inch too small, but we figured that they could take the fridge doors off as there was a measurement without same and it would fit.
One thing husband had read about is that the freezer in this type of fridge has a small “door” to the main compartment which opens and closes to take cold air into the freezer and it makes the main fridge section warmer. We have a small freezer in the basement - from when we used to grow vegetables and I would actually shop at sales to buy food and would store the extra in this freezer. Now it is mostly empty - when I went to see what was in it - everything had a date to use by in 2016. I tossed them out. I then took all of the items in our fridge’s freezer downstairs to the freezer. Only things I left in the upstairs freezer are some of those liquid filled plastic things that one freezes and puts with food or meds to keep them cold in transit. I then turned the fridge’s freezer temperature almost all the way to the warmest temperature. (We would need to move the frozen food to same anyway as it takes a day for the new fridge/freezer to reach temperature.
Overnight the same thought came to each of us - the fridge also had to pass through 2 doorways in the house - and they were narrower. Then husband went downstairs and laid out the measurements of the fridge we ordered - it was huge! It would not only block part of the entry into the kitchen from the dining room, it would also block access the (only) light switches in the kitchen. I measured the old fridge and came in about 3-4 inches smaller front to back then he had measured. We went back to the store and canceled the order.
Now what to do? Well, the fridge had been working okay since yesterday (Tuesday). Maybe it would keep working - at least until we return from a trip next week. The sale on the various refrigerators continues to July 10, so we could still get the price when we came back. We looked at the 3 fridges in the right size and decided which one we would get - but we figured we would buy it after we returned from our trip.
Husband decided he wanted a chicken pie we had in the freezer. I went down and took it out. Temperature in the fridge was 37F - great! I put the pie in to cook and was playing games on my cell phone. I wanted a glass of soda - in taking out the bottle that was there, I notice we would need more and added a bottle - a room temperature bottle - to the fridge. When I looked up again the temperature was 45F??!!! By now we have several thermometers sitting in the fridge - the one we normally use seems to always be the odd one out. In this case the others all showed the temperature to be 40F - could it be a thermometer problem? We have spare of the remote read and I set that up and took the first one out - same problem. Even with the temperature set to the coldest setting - it was not getting colder, the compressor did not seem to be on. We unplugged the fridge and then plugged it in again (it seemed to help twice before since the weekend). No effect.
Extremely s l o w l y the temperature dropped. After dinner, we went out and ordered the fridge that we had decided to order next week. I don’t love it - but hopefully it will work and it is better than the huge side by side husband wanted - and it should fit through all the doors it needs to. It is suppose to be here Friday.
Now for logistics -
We have an automatic ice maker to old fridge - as we had one before, we had bought it again. We are not getting one for our new fridge - we rarely use ice and end up tossing out the shrunken cubes that are in the freezer. We can do it “the old fashioned way” and have frozen trays of ice in the freezer. But we have to shut off the water to the fridge and get rid of the water in the line. Husband found it and turned it closed as far it as it went. I threw out the shrunken, dried cubes in the ice bucket and turned the ice maker on to use the rest of the water in the line up. We either have much more water in the line than we thought, the ice maker uses much less water than we figure - or the water is not actually off and has a leak in the tap as we keep getting more ice cubes - right now they are just shells of ice, but they keep coming. Just heard more drop. We bought a “cap” for the end of the water line - just in case the water is not and cannot be shut off completely.
Freezer, as mentioned, is basically empty.
That leaves our fridge section. There is an open package of American cheese slices, an open package of cream cheese, 2 hot dogs, and 6 eggs in it. I have 2 of husband’s insulin pens in it. If we cannot keep them below 46F, I am not going to worry about it as they will need to be used within 42 days - and they are 20 days worth, plus husband is in the middle of pen - so they should be used up long before the 42 days. The rest of what is in there does not really need to be in a fridge “to keep” - soda, sealed bottles of ice tea, condiments (no mayo), and similar. Our RV is currently plugged in to charge the batteries (done twice a month, just happened to be doing it now) and we will turn on the fridge in the RV tomorrow and put the food from the fridge in it until we can move it to the new fridge. (Hot dogs could just be frozen and put in the basement freezer.)
I soooooo hope that this is the last of the stupidity that has been going on. (Well, I do have to make a 3rd call to an insurance for our reenacting unit - so, still repeating chores over and over.) I really cannot take any more!
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
When one thinks that everything is resolved - something isn’t and will need to be dealt with and redone.
Oh, and things always break at the wrong time.
Oh, and when all these things are going on and one goes down to do laundry and pours water out of the dehumidifier all over the basement - the laundry can wait!
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