Defrosting the Freezer...

Well, we all defrosted freezers at the end of each semester in college, but that consisted of taking everything out, unplugging it, opening the door, putting a towel underneath, walking away, and coming back to a mildly damp towel and a clean fridge.  It was a little bit of a different experience when we had to do it last week...

It all started when Annika called me to tell me that the door to the freezer had popped off and wouldn't go back on.  The ice had been building up for almost three months and I guess the door had finally just had it.  It wasn't a huge deal because the freezer is just in the top section of the fridge, so everything would stay cold...just maybe a little too cold with the freezer being open to the fridge.  So we chose not to deal with it for a few days.

(It was actually way worse than this...this is after a few hours of defrosting and Alisha chipping away at it with a knife.)

We finally got brave enough to deal with it, and after asking the advice of our wonderful neighbor, moved all of our food that had to be refrigerated to her fridge, and unplugged our silly little fridge.  We were home for a few hours after unplugging it and didn't see much progress so we weren't too worried when Alzenira told us that it was time to leave for a church event (she was walking with us so we could learn a new part of the city...it resulted in us walking almost 2 miles up hill).  When we got back, there was water EVERYWHERE.  The freezer was almost completely defrosted, the drawer that was supposed to catch the water was completely full, and there was water spilling onto the floor.

We froze our hands trying to get the rest of it off and empty out the drawer and clean everything that was being dripped on.  But, eventually, the defrosting was over, everything was clean, we could turn our fridge back on and collect our food from our neighbor's fridge.

(Our mess of stuff that used to be in our fridge..and if you look closely you can see lots of ice chunks in the sink.)

A few days later we decided it was time to put the freezer door back on.  I have NO IDEA how that door popped off because we had to get a screwdriver, develop a strategy and spend almost 20 minutes trying to get it back on.

One week later: There is a fresh layer of ice in the freezer and we're about to defrost again (because apparently once every 3 months isn't going to cut it)