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This is a serious upgrade. Blog readers will remember two years ago that I bought my new camera with money originally earmarked to replace our refrigerator. We hadn’t seen anything we liked, plus, the heights were all unable to fit under the cabinet that was above our refrigerator. So we decided to live with our broken vegetable drawers, and the unsightly rust around the freezer that our guests probably thought was gross dirt.

Then this past summer disaster struck a friend whom I share time with in the Tuesday morning pottery studio. While she and her husband and two teen boys were out of state on vacation, their house burned down to the ground during the night. Their three dear dogs were inside and also were lost. Horrible right? My heart surged out to her.

Then I talked to her and found out the culprit: an 18 year old refrigerator. She said that if they had been home, the flames would have gone directly up into the master bedroom, so maybe it was a blessing they were gone. After this staggering blow, they are slowly getting back on their feet, with the help of friends, a great attitude, major insurance, and adopting two new golden retriever puppies.

Aside from wanting to support my friend, this object lesson was a little too pointed for me, as it may be to some of you out there. Our refrigerator was 23 years old, and because it still worked, we were not motivated to replace it until now. How could we ignore such a warning as this?

So even though financially (with two kids in college) this wan’t a great time to do so, we just bought a new refrigerator. It has now arrived, and they took the old one out to be recycled. Meanwhile, we had all our food languishing on the counter, and there were a few nervous moments over whether we could get the new refrigerator in, because our doorway’s opening was only 1/4″ larger than it was without its doors!

This refrigerator is bigger than our old one. We had to remove the cabinet above to make room for it, and it looks very newfangled and posh in our 1952 kitchen! We have yet to finish the wall above it (with a shelf planned to display some of my pottery) and are waiting for a plumber to come and hook it up to water, since we’ve never had an ice machine before.

We are getting used to two handles in the middle instead of one on the side, and are trying to get over a few design flaws we hadn’t noticed when choosing it. The doors do not close all the way on their own (you must push them shut) and why can’t you remove the drawers for cleaning? Still it is fresh, clean, more energy efficient, and presumably safer.

So do you have an old refrigerator? Should you be replacing yours too?

In this post you can see the old and the new, as well as a bit of the process… And also, at the very bottom, you can see a photo of someone to send good, supportive thoughts to. xx

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