It was one of those days. I went to the freezer to get ice cubes for my Hydroflask and noticed something was off about the ice cubes. They didn’t seem frozen all the way through. Condensation was dripping inside the trays. I thought, “that’s odd.” So I checked the motor/blower and it wasn’t turning. Unusual. I looked into the refrigerator and noticed that the dial was not set at 4 or even the recommended 3. It was off…
My toddler decided it was fun to turn the dial and neglected to mention to us that he turned it off. It remained off overnight. The kicker is, we just bought groceries earlier that afternoon. “So, what happened next?” you ask. Well, let’s just say we needed to purchase some meat and throw out a few items: chicken, ground turkey, pork chops all ruined.
The silver lining was that it caused minimal damage to our wallet. However, had we eaten the meat that could potentially have been spoiled or rotten, we would have had major issues like food poisoning, botulism, or some other infection related to rotten food. My wife wanted to go to the store and get more meat, but I had to stop her and think “what if the fridge isn’t keeping things cold? What if we have to throw out the new meat again right after we purchased it for the second time?”
If you have kids, the lesson here is this: invest in childproof locks for the refrigerator. They are too tempted to turn dials or press buttons. Zero impulse control. Also, they just stand and stare at the fridge when it is open looking at all the food options while letting all the cold air out. Safe to say we caught it early enough and nobody got sick. Crisis averted.
Before we had this issue, we dealt with a refrigerator that wasn’t keeping things cold for about 1-2 weeks before we realized that the culprit was standing in our kitchen. The emergency fund is in place for a time such as that. We couldn’t wait to get it delivered and ended up putting everything in coolers with ice packed into them. We also needed to order take-out a bit more so we didn’t harm our bodies by putting in food that was meant to be kept cold at 36 degrees when the temp on the controller was showing 56+.
What stories do you have regarding refrigerator battles?
Madsen Financial Coaching 