random thoughts – Day 1,699 – (Monday) – new cool

The refrigerator bought on Veterans Day weekend during a sale and before the promised tariffs of the incoming administration go into effect that will likely increase the prices of absolutely everything was delivered this morning. The time between purchase and delivery gave me a week to eat as much as possible from the big cold box. Oh wait, that was stress eating, not strategy.

On Friday, the appliance store notified that the delivery would be between 7:30 and 9:30. I haven’t owned a cooler since 2013 when I sold, gave away, and donated a ton off stuff including the cooler before I moved. There was a week of wondering what to do with the food during installation, and finally last night I remembered the several chiller bags in the laundry closet. They were from some of the many food deliveries from Whole Foods during the pandemic when deliveries were free with Prime membership. They had been saved under the “some day I might need those” genetically inherited packrat mentality, and finally there is a bona fide case of “some day” coming around.

The pre-installation guidance was to remove items from the walls on the travel path and near the site of the appliance. On Sunday night nine pieces of art were removed from the wall near the fridge and stacked on a counter.

At 7:20 this morning an automated call came saying the new refrigerator would be arriving in about 15 minutes. Coffee drinking was paused and I launched into action launching the contents of the fridge into cooler bags and setting them in the tub. A few and definitely not 15 minutes later, I was emptying the freezer of food and a dozen or so ice blocks and packs that had permanent residence in there when there was a knock at the door. The delivery team came in and scoped out the path from truck to kitchen refrigerator nook.

They held the cooler bags while I continued chucking items into them. They strapped up the fridge and rolled it through the doorway to the dining room. With their gloves on, the fingers and fridge barely cleared the space. I hurried to sweep the fridge nook.

Refrigerator and art.

The new unit was rolled in, plugged in, and set in place. And boom, by 7:45, the delivery team and the old unit had driven off and I was back to drinking coffee. The guidance was to wait two hours before loading the fridge and freezer, but that didn’t really happen. I rehung the displaced artwork and lasted about 30 minutes before I started putting things into the fridge and freezer. Did I really need to wait for the unit to chill itself when everything going back into it was already frozen, chilled, or an ice pack? Wouldn’t that help the cooling situation?

There was time to examine the expiration dates on items before they went back into the big chill box. Most things were okay, but the rarely used mustard turned out to have a best by date from the summer of 2022, the giant bottle of Italian dressing was a year past its expiration, and the mayonnaise jar had next to nothing left in it. It was better than I thought.

Now there is a cool new GE refrigerator freezer in The BungaLowell and things are different. It’s definitely quieter than the old one. There are a few features I’m not super keen on that I would have known about if there had been a floor model to look at. The deli drawer and the two produce drawers are significantly smaller than the old ones. Errrrr. The old produce drawers were squared and big enough that all my produce usually fit into one and the other held wine and beer. The new ones have sloped back walls and it took both drawers to hold a small head of broccoli, a pound of green beans, and a two-pound bag of carrots. That is going to be a summertime nightmare. And for some reason, when the lower big door closes, the upper freezer door pops open and then closes with a little sigh.

On the bonus side, the door has deeper racks and one more than the old fridge. And the freezer has an actual shelf, which the old one didn’t, but it doesn’t reach all the way to the back, so things keep slipping into the gap in the way back. Organizing containers have been ordered. Hopefully they will be as great as I imagine and solve all my problems.