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Home > The Great Freezer Meltdown of 2006

The Great Freezer Meltdown of 2006

August 26th, 2006 at 06:22 am

Our freezer quit working in a quite spectacular fashion. Combine this with the door being left open a couple inches and it was not a pretty site that greeted me. Since it is older than I am by a few years, I guess I'm surprised it lasted this long.

There is no fix to it, it won't turn on anymore and there were sparks involved and a rather obnoxious noise when it quit. So we had a nice 2 inch layer of water/ice cream/stickiness of unknown origin to deal with on the laundry room floor. Okay, well it is mostly cleaned up now, though there is still a high level of stickiness. But I am soaking that up with wet towels and hopefully by morning it will just wipe up. One can hope.

We probably lost about $300 worth of food since we had a lot of beef, chicken, and fish and shellfish in it. Very little was salvageable. Pretty much just the butter and some bricks of cheese and frozen berries that were in the back behind everything else and were still frozen solid.

Well, today was payday and we did have the $65 that we normally used for the cable bill when we still had cable that was going to go into savings and I was ahead on the house insurance payment, so the extra money I was sending there I combined with the old cable money and we bought a half size chest freezer at Sears for $189 with tax. At least the door to this one can't be left open. Well, it could, but people would notice.

Fortunately it only took the freezer 4 hours to get cold. We did a big Costco run today, $145, and were able to cage freezer space from a neighbor until it was cold, but we would have just used our ice chests if we couldn't have.

Obviously savings did not get as big a boost today as planned, but I did put in the $50 I owed it, so it is now at $779.85, so I have passed my goal of $750 and am on my way to my next goal of $1000. Just $221.15 to go. I'm a little irritated when I think it should be $844.85, but for the freezer debacle and then I'd only have $155.15 to go. I need to look on the bright side and consider that at least I had the money available to replace the freezer without putting it on a credit card. That is always a blessing.

This purachase wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the fact that DH's birthday is on the 30th and he wants a weight bench. Well, that will have to wait until next month. My mother's birthday is on the 28th and I have to figure out what I will do for that. I have to drive DH to the airport that same day. My sister and her family will be at my mom's for dinner so we will make it back in time to go there, also.

Today I also stopped at a farm stand and spent $10 on fresh fruit and some sweet corn.

Bills paid were the power bill, internet bill, propane tank rental bill, and phone bill. I also have to pay the mortgage out of this paycheck and the medical mortgage, but haven't made it into those banks yet. Will probably do so on Monday.

Also spent $55 to get a new tire for my ten-speed and had them put it on the wheel. It is made for bumpy roads or it would have been $15 cheaper for the tire. We have very bumpy roads out here, so felt the expense was justified. DH will put the wheel back on my bike in the morning and he has already put on the new, cushy gel seat and then he has to put the new pedals on his bike and we need to finish teaching Tobias how to ride without the training wheels, he's about five minutes from it so should be good by the end of the day tomorrow. Then we can start riding again, this time as a family.

Samples in the mail today were Degree anti-perspirant, biore face wash (2) and pore strip (1), and miessences body wash. I just sent for that last one this week, so it came super fast.

Paid fines at the library today (not my fines, DH, the kids, which is DH's responsibility as well, and one lost book of T's) and picked up my hold, which is a book on CD as the library didn't have the book at all. It is The Automatic Millionaire. Should be interesting.

I have to write a balance transfer check out and mail it off tomorrow. It will pay off the Chase card and then everything will be combined onto the other card, so we will be down to just two credit cards with balances on them. This one is at 6.99% until April. Two payments will be a lot easier to manage and keep track of.

I think that pretty much covers everything that we did today.

5 Responses to “The Great Freezer Meltdown of 2006”

  1. campfrugal Says:
    1156596750

    Another bright side on the freezer. You will save money on your electric bill, cause the new ones or more effecient. Sorry, for the breakdown and mess though.

  2. LuxLiving Says:
    1156597308

    Wow - busy day. Congrats on the family bike riding! Lifetime memories for you guys!

    Question - what is a medical mortgage?? I haven't read thru your archives, was this for a medical bill that you took out a second for?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    LuxLivingFrugalis

  3. contrary1 Says:
    1156600661

    Boy, can I identify with your freezer mess. I've had a disaster before too. I did submit my claim to my homeowners insurance, as it was covered up to a certain point for the food loss. I had just butchered so it wasn't bad, most of the meat was in a locker but there was still a big loss in regular items.

    And, the mess...........ICK. We too had a door that wouldn't close without an argument each time, so I ended up locking it shut, so I was the only one getting into it. It was way more secure that way, I wasn't so paranoid when the kids would be the ones having to shut the door.

  4. homebody Says:
    1156602102

    That reminds me..... SAVE FOR A NEW FREEZER!... Our is sooo old, someone gave it to us about 7 years ago and it was old then!

    Even with just the two of us, we will still need a freezer. I think a chest freezer was our first appliance purchase after we married 28 years ago.

  5. LuckyRobin Says:
    1156629443

    Lux--

    I had 3 major abdominal surgeries over the course of 3 years, and over the last 10 a couple minor laporoscopies, sinus surgery, several miscarriages that required hospitalization, and treatment for endometriosis and PCOS. I ended up with a $300,000 medical bill at 18% after insurance paid their portion. We were able to negotiate it down to $155,000 (its less than that now, but not by much) if we had collateral, so my parents put a 6% mortgage on their house that we pay. The hospital holds the mortgage. I call that my medical mortgage, to differentiate it from my house mortgage.

    Robin

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