Friday, August 28, 2009

Frost free freezer?

I think not! The Spring, now almost Fall, cleaning continues, and I made a few discoveries in the last 48 hours. First, I am not, nor have ever been, a Suzy Homemaker. With that said I have always been leery of having a certain friend over for any visits that might include fixing a meal. Why? Because she cleans her refrigerator every two weeks. I mean empties and wipes down. Not my style for sure. However, the past three days I have been cleaning out the freezer. I have not defrosted since I got it, oh, about six years ago!! However, in my defense, I have never lost any food due to power outages. The frost was substantial, and it is crabbing season for the neighbor. What better time to clean out the expired meats than crab season!! That, or course lead to the defrosting. I was really curious how long the food would stay frozen, but then got sick of waiting after three days. I began to purge. Having done the freezer I decided that I also needed to do the freezer on the top of the refrigerator. I knew there were some things to toss in there as well, and that would leave space for the rest of the freezer foods as the deep freeze shed its "snow." I will say that the crabs will eat pretty well. For a while I went on a heavy meat diet. Mostly I was eating for those twenty eight years of no beef in the house. That went away as I worked to shed the pounds a couple of years ago. I found some interesting things buried in the deep freeze. There was no placenta this time, as there was when I moved here. However, buried in the back was a wee bit of Kira's milk that she had pumped when Mimi was staying here...almost six years ago!! Last night I chipped away at the snow laden racks in the deep freeze and by midnight it was clean and running once again. This morning I just had to do the refrigerator. I also found a couple of things about the refrigerator. The more artwork and pictures held to the front, the nicer it looks underneath, and the less scrubbing. Did you know that raisins and olives look pretty much the same after months in a frost free fridge? Yep. Little black pebbles. Uh huh. So, tools that are handy include the Mr. Clean Eraser, the Dawn pump foam stuff, a scrubby sponge and lots of paper towels. The glass racks all went to soak in the bathtub. I scrubbed, and I scrubbed. The more I scrubbed, the more corgi hair appeared. The paper towels were necessary to finally remove it. Three garbage bags later there is next to nothing in my clean sparkling fridge. That is a good thing because one of the door retaining rack thingies broke so I have only two until after the next payday. I may try PVC pipe cement to glue it together for a couple of weeks. However, all is well as, like I said, there is little in there. There is nothing of "normal" fat content. All the salad dressings are now low fat. If it ain't there, I cannot consume it. The Pedialyte with the expiration of 06 is also gone. It feels pretty darn good. Will I do it again in two weeks? Not on your life! However, there is no need for pickle juice, multiple opened jams, and a container with the dregs of "grow hair on a doorknob." My dogs also don't need the calories, so Kate is now on a different supplement in hopes of continuing her hair growth and shine. As it is each time I do a "deep clean" I stare in delight at my wonderful clean, in this case, fridge and freezer. Now I need to boil some eggs and get some greens. I need to chop some onions. I am back on track with my diet, and I have a nice clean fridge in which to store my fixin's. The last thing to do a big clean job on? The oven. It isn't bad so shouldn't take too long. At this rate I can see me actually getting to the garage before it gets too terribly cold out there. All of this would not have happened had I had a frost free deep freeze. Seriously. Some things that make our lives easier, can also lead to laziness for me. There is always plenty to do that will allow me to put this stuff off for SIX YEARS...I am bad, very, very bad. Now, however, I can have this certain friend over and not worry. We can even fix ourselves some dinner; well, some salad anyway, which is my version of dinner.

G2

3 comments:

Lorrene said...

We must be twins. I find cleaning out the freezer and fridge at the bottom of my list of things to do. I applaud you !!!!!!

Lori Thornbrue said...

Well now.......it's only been 2 1/2 years on my freezer (because that is when we moved last)......and it is really something that needs to be done before summer is over. Will it happen? I don't really have any food to fill it back up, so the ice build up at least makes it look somewhat full!! Ha!
I think I'll go take a nap!

2Grandmas2 said...

Oh my, you're killing me! Also, I am now very glad that the freezer I got is NOT frost free...
Love ya! S2