Is Your Refrigerator Running? Better Go Catch It!

You know, it's always the unexpected things that bite you in the behind. For the last month or so, the freezer in our refrigerator has been incrementally not freezing things, to the point where it wasn't making ice or freezing stuff in the door. This was in addition to our dryer spitting oil and/or grease all over our clothes, necessitating weekly trips to the laundromat.

So yesterday we had a repairman come out to look at our ailing machines. And it turns out that both of them are shot. For the frig, it was a condenser and compressor and several other things that would cost as much as a new frig to fix, and the dryer had issues with seals and gaskets and enough other things that would cost as much as a new dryer to fix. They'd both had good long lives. The frig came from my parents' house, which they'd bought when they gave us their other refrigerator when we moved into our house, so it was over 10 years old. The dryer had been purchased at the Sears Outlet (because that's how we roll) at least 7 or 8 years ago, so it was getting older as well.

So at lunch yesterday, Sheryl and I met at the Sears Outlet once again and picked out a new (slightly banged up) refrigerator. We'll stick with the laundromat for the time being or see if someone at church has one they want to sell inexpensively, or we might check Craigslist or even Freecycle.

The nice thing was that we had some money saved up to be able to do the frig without dipping into our savings. The bad thing was that it was Christmas money and money that I'd been saving to get a hi-def TV. However, while being an adult is definitely not always as cool as I thought it would when I was a kid (with all the bills and responsibility and such), this is what I signed up for. And I would much rather have the new frig paid for free and clear, rather than have the money and do payments. Which means that I'll just have to start from scratch to save for the TV again.

So that's the appliance saga. Hopefully we'll be in a long ride with few or no problems with the new frig.