Last week my American fridge freezer stopped working. First the freezer went and then after a day or so (and after transferring most of my food from the freezer into the fridge apart from the ice creams) I realised my fridge stopped working as well. Of course I was quite annoyed by the whole thing since the appliance is about 8 years old and had a repair about 2.5 years ago for quite a hefty sum.
Then I realised there were certain things I should do and being organised helped so much in tackling this problem.
First I decided to get my fridge/freezer manual out to see if I could find any troubleshooting pages. I keep all my kitchen appliance manuals in a kitchen drawer for easy access. I also have each manual labelled, so it was easy to retrieve the right one from the stack of manuals. Unfortunately this didn’t help in getting the fridge to work again. Luckily we had a small camping fridge in our loft to store most of the food in while sorting out this problem.
Then I called the customer service desk, so I could find out about repairs and costs involved. I had written the number down on the manual after the last repair, so this was an easy task. After speaking to the helpdesk I found out the call out and repair costs were so large again with only a 90-day repair guarantee that we decided it was better to replace the appliance and buy a new fridge/freezer.
Thirdly I made a meal plan for that week so we could eat and use as much as possible from the freezer and try and waste as little food as possible. Unfortunately my freezer was well stocked, with a bit more items in than usual, so it was important to work out what we could do with all the left-overs and keep the waste down.
I realised I was really pleased I had labelled my Tupperware with the contents of the containers, the date it was put in the freezer and for how many persons I estimated it would be good for. This helped in deciding on when to eat what.
Yesterday my new fridge/freezer was delivered and installed and I’m pleased to say we only had to throw out a small amount of food. We really got creative in what we were eating over the week and I saved a substantial amount of money on my food shop this week. It made me realise what a wonderful piece of equipment a fridge/freezer actually is and how lucky we are that we have one! Last but not least it occurred to me that it really is important to label those containers and finish those left-overs before they get too old.
Hopefully this blog will get you to clear the freezer of any food that has been in there for ages and you will save some money as well!
