In preparation for Thanksgiving, I am doing some housecleaning. All ambitious last Saturday, I had a long list of To-Do's. The first thing I did was clean the oven. I wiped out the inside of all extra drippings (time: 5 minutes) so it wouldn't smoke up the house when I turned the oven on to the 1000 degree self-cleaning. It took 3 hours for the oven to clean itself.
For some reason I had to get something out of the freezer and I decided that it was now or never to defrost the freezer since there was quite a bit of frost buildup and it was a pretty decent day outside. This wasn't even on my list of To-Do's but it had to be done so I budgeted 2 hours for it. (The reason it didn't get done this summer was because there was so much meat in it and the heat of summer wouldn't be the best for frozen meat.)
I unloaded the contents into a large picnic cooler, a small cooler, a blue IKEA bag, and the empty fridge next to the freezer. The last time I cleaned the freezer, there was water all over the floor of the garage even though I had placed pans to catch the dripping thawing ice. This time I wanted to avoid that so I got quite inventive. Pampered Chef has a tool that has several tines on it to hold meat and such while you cut it. It was the perfect thing to use with the meat tenderizer to chisel away the ice which would then fall into the cookie sheet to be emptied on the lawn outside. It really did work quite well, but when you have 5 shelves of frosty ice buildup to chisel, you soon start to relate to Michaelangelo (sp?) as he carved statues out of marble. My budget of 2 hours turned into 4 hours and 45 minutes of chiseling ice.
The other smart thing I did was to lay used bath towels at the very bottom of the freezer to soak up the inevitable water I couldn't catch as ice. Then I just put them in the washer and I didn't have to worry about the water all over the garage floor. The not-so-smart thing I did was to have Brandon move the fridge out so I could unplug the freezer while I defrosted it. I was really bugged at having to do this. When Dad got home and asked about the fridge being out of place, I complained about how inconvenient it was. He took me out in the garage and showed me the knob on the inside of the freezer that rotates to the Off position. I was so busy whacking away at ice, that I didn't even see it.
Once all the ice was chipped away, I reloaded the freezer. We have at least 120 pounds of holy hamburger in there. I was so tired by the time I got done, that the rest of my To-Do's have been postponed until another day. Holy Cow, will someone please invent a self-cleaning freezer?!!!
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2 comments:
You are my hero! Yesterday I went to get something out of my freezer for dinner. I notice the popsicles were liquid and it occured to me that something was wrong. I will send Haylee your way next time you need your shut off knob found. She apparently knows how to find them. Let me know how I can help with your house. It has been awhile since we have been out and I would be glad to help.
You are ambitious. If anyone says anything about your house being dusty just point them to your freezer and you can dazzle them there. By the way, if you need to unload any of your 120 pounds of hamburger, my freezer has room.
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