We Will Finally Have Enough Ice This Summer



We've not had much luck in the refrigerator department since we built our house. While we rented or had the trailer, our refrigerators worked just fine. Perhaps because they were older than dirt and didn't have fun new features to go bad. And by "fun new features" I mean ice makers.

We're not fancy here. Obviously.

When we built 10 years ago (which seems like just yesterday, kind of, and yet seems like.... ten years ago) we bought a brand new, top of the middle class refrigerator. It didn't have a TV on the door or even a touch screen anything, but it did make ice automatically. We really felt like we were moving' on up.

If you're too young to know that reference, GET OFF MY LAWN. *ahem*

That refrigerator died a slow death, with a stab to the heart from my husband (accidentally) to finish it off. At 6:00pm on New Year's Eve. Thank goodness for Lowe's that was still open and we could go purchase another. That was a stellar way to start a new year, with the debt of a brand new refrigerator hanging over our heads. The kicker is that the ice machine never worked very well on either one of those brand new refrigerators that we purchased. Two refrigerators in 10 years. That just isn't right. And two that have given us nothing but headaches in the ice department.

I mean, how hard is it to freeze water in a timely manner? And by "timely manner," I mean "please don't let us run out of ice before 10:00 am today." It was a real struggle.

I say "was" because the ice maker died in our second new refrigerator. We are not buying a 3rd one just because our food cooling unit won't freeze water into cubes. We, instead, kicked it old school, because we're hoping for the prestigious award of Cheapest People On Planet Earth. We bought ice cube trays.

Yes, they still sell those. Who knew?

For about $10 (because we got super fancy ice cube trays) we now have 8 plastic trays freezing ice on the top shelf in our freezer. Once these are frozen, we dump the ice into the bin so that we can use the dispenser on the door. (We still love our small conveniences, and it's all about appearance, right?)

Here's the thing. Those ice trays freeze larger chunks of ice than the refrigerator ever did, and they're not hollow like the fridge was so fond of making. Those chunks of ice are solid. Solid cubes take up more space in your cup and chill your drink far better, so we use less ice than we did previously. We only empty those trays once daily, and we haven't once run out of ice since implementing the new and improved old school system.

Turns out, you just can't beat old school for modern convenience.


1 comment:

HalfAsstic.com said...

ihave just confirmed with john and we both agree that our ice maker has been out for about two years. However, we have been buying bagged ice at the convenience store down the road and putting it into our ben so that we can dispense it through the door.we did the ice tray thing for a good while and just gave it up. Our old Whirlpool is still kicking after 20 years. But just barely.