Who Knew?

We have had our fridge for almost 12 years. It came new with the house. I loved my new Whirlpool side-by-side, ice and water dispensing wonder of the kitchen gods. Notice that was past tense?

Through its 12 years of service the fridge has taken a beating… literally, unfortunately. In my absence, a child of mine, who was old enough to know better, spent an evening taking shots at my beloved refrigerator with a hockey stick and puck. He didn’t even bother trying to cover his tracks by wiping off the black puck marks in all 27 dents. It was a low point of my summer… I cried. Remember, I loved my fridge.

Then the ice maker stopped producing ice. We had a handyman come and “fix” it. Seems he wasn’t as handy as we hoped. To replace the whole ice maker it would suck $158 from my clothes shopping fund (because we didn’t have a ice-maker-replacement-fund at the time)… so I bought plastic ice cube trays at Walmart. BAM. Bring on six more flowy tank tops in bright colors with fringe on the bottom and bling on the front. Priorities, people.

Next the water dispenser stopped pouring water into my cup. I realize this is a first world problem. (No hate mail, please.) This was a while ago and if my memory serves me correctly, it was around the same time the stinky slime puddle was discovered growing three colors of mold under the fridge. Maybe during the clean-up (that made me gag profusely) the hose to the water dispenser got kinked or cut or removed at that time. Who knew?

Finally, the magnetism on the fridge door weakened so badly that if you shut the freezer, the fridge door opened just a smidge. Somehow this often happened after a son of mine made his midnight raid on the fridge and I would find the door still open in the morning. A smidge is a big enough gap on a side-by-side Whirlpool refrigerator to cause havoc inside the once-cold-box. The motor kicked into high gear, due to the warm kitchen air penetrating the cold barrier. This caused all of my vegetables in the two bottom crisper drawers to freeze solid… and the milk jugs in the door were warmer than cold. Ewwww.

After ten years of owning our home with 8 1/2 major appliances (Is a microwave major?) my thrift-minded and possibly doomsday-anticipating husband purchased a warranty for all major appliances. However, as our fridge was deteriorating before my hazel eyes, I did not remember the warranty purchase. I simply put the vegetables on the top shelf and continued filling ice cube trays.

Two weeks back, my handsome husband handed me a two-year-old warranty agreement and suggested I call to get the fridge fixed. WHAT? Maybe he was trying to get the most out of his $75 call-out fee and waited for three things to be wrong with the fridge. Again, who knew?

Last week the friendly repair man came, looked the fridge over, I paid him $75 and he left. Yesterday, he showed up again and fixed ALL the problems with my fridge, with the exception of the hockey puck dents. BUT, the water tasted horrible coming out of the dispenser… and I knew the new ice cubes were being made with the same horrible water.

Today I looked up the water filter number and ordered a new one on Amazon prime. It will be at my house in two days. BAM!

All this to ask, DID YOU KNOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE CHANGING YOUR FRIDGE WATER FILTER EVERY SIX MONTHS? Who knew? We have saved money on 23 replacements filters that we never bought…. that is $456.55! Saving cash like a boss.

 

 

 

If You Give a Mom a Lightbulb…

This is EXACTLY like the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, except different.

I love a bright and sun-shiny house which is a bonus living in Arizona, land of the golden sun almost every blinkin’ day! But I’m also a night owl and need some electrical help for partying and mayhem after sundown. (Thank God we don’t have to kill geese to get fat, so we could rip up old sheets and braid them together to make lamp wicks!!! I’m also thankful for air conditioning, but that’s to be praised another time.)

So, when the three light fixtures in our kitchen/family room were reduced to only 7 of 11 bulbs working, I quit relying on Mr. Fix-It, and took matters into my own hands at Walmart. There are SO many choices for light bulbs these days. Thomas Edison would be in filament heaven had he lived to be 168 years old! And I’m not sure what I really think about the swirly bulbs that require a hazmat suit in order to dispose of them. My theory is that Mr. Hazmat invented the swirly bulbs to increase suit sales. Crosbys did not fall for that. We’re not from the sticks. (Well, I’M not.)

The bulbs were replaced in the kitchen and over the table. All went well. No electrocution. No falling and not getting up. Then came the family room ceiling fan/light. Good gravy, it looked so straightforward. I’m a technical woman who can change a tire and install a ceiling fan with the best of ’em. I thought I was capable of changing one light bulb without peril. Not true.

Carefully standing on the kitchen chair (not a rolling chair, mind you!), I unscrewed the bottom cutesy bolt and tried to lower the globe in one fell swoop. There were these pesky pull chains with the wide dealie-bobs that hook them together that did not fit through the little holes in the bottom support plate. If I were an octopus, I could have done it. But I’m not. Then I had to stand their holding up the globe while my little assistant fed the chickens, changed their water, gathered eggs…..slower than a turtle riding on a slug’s back!

She finally had the hens happy and pecking and she returned inside so I could hand her the light blub, each little pull cord piece, the fancy bolt screw, the support plate and eventually the burned out bulb. (Only AFTER she washed her hands to eliminate salmonella from spreading in amongst our family unit.) VOILA! Easy peasey! Yeah yeah, grasshopper, it all looks so simple.

I replaced the bulb like a pro. BAM! Next I put the paper-thin glass globe back in place, but realized I needed to put the pull cords back together first. PHUN! That done, the globe went back up and I began the trying-not-to-swear job of feeding the little tiny chains through their little tiny holes in the support plate. The globe slipped and I caught it. Catastrophe averted. I painstakingly tried again and AGAIN to get the blasted chains in the stupid holes. The globe slipped again and I accidentally slammed it back up too hard in my haste and it cracked. Not a simple straight one-inch-long crack that could be crazy glued. It was a sophisticated nine-inch crack shaped like a question mark. Cool! Um, no.

Slightly defeated, I put the globe in a plastic bag where it proceeded to break itself into two pieces. Over the river and through the woods to the hardware store we went. They do not sell replacement globes at said store close to our house. I did not want to drive all over Timbuktu to find a new globe. We looked for the cheapest light fixture that had a similar globe and bought it. Here it is:

That sounds all nice and quaint and smart and all. BUT, the center bolt in the ceiling fan was too long, so we had to replace it with the new one. Easy! The new light came with a fancy silver support plate and cutesy bolt that didn’t match. We decided to use the old gold ones, but there were no holes in the new globe for pull chains. So my husband got the wire cutters and cut them off. Just like that… no more variable speeds at the Crosby farm. Our fan is forever on high and the light is on BRIGHT! Those chains you see hanging there in the picture are placebo chains. If you ever come over to visit (or just to marvel at a hobo-Joe repair job), do not, I repeat, DO NOT pull on them. Use the light switch on the wall, please and thank you.