Monday, August 3, 2009

Three Strikes Your Out, or How Our Freezer Died

*WARNING: this post is not for the weak stomached, easily grossed out, germophobic, or those prone to nightmares. Proceed with caution and DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ WHILE EATING. Don't say I didn't warn you!*
Today was our garbage day. Normally a day we celebrate by either running to the curb in bare feet and pajamas, racing against an approaching garbage truck or by a sinking realization halfway through the day, calculating how we will fit another weeks worth of garbage into an overflowing bin. But not this week. This week we looked forward to Garbage Day, counting down the days, giddy with anticipation. Garbage Day Eve we put out our bin, too excited to wait any longer. You see, last week our freezer broke.

It all started a couple weeks ago. One of the children left the door ajar a couple inches. Not far, just enough to thaw the door items, ruin the popsicles, and leave the other items slightly under frozen. Remember how we bought half a cow? We still had 1/4 of the meat left and I decided its cost was worth the risk; I shut the door so everything would freeze completely and continued on my way.

A week later I opened the garage door to a strange odor, strong enough to add "clean the garage" to my to-do list. By the next day the smell was strong enough to move "clean the garage" to a high priority. The next morning I wanted to plug my nose with cement. My nose bandanna covered to counter the smell, I went to work emptying the garage. When it was emptied, the smell persisted and was especially strong near the freezer. Turns out some of the meat had thawed enough for juice to get into the defrost tray, going rancid during the week. I cleaned it out with bleach and vowed to not let the kids near the freezer unsupervised. I told Peter we might need to look into getting a new freezer (ours was 10 years old, we bought it from a friend when they moved and it was not only slowly dying, it was getting harder to get a tight seal on the door). Peter thought I was overreacting.

Another week passed and entering the garage, I found the freezer door wide open. Everything in it was cold, but completely thawed. I could handle it once, but twice? No. The meat was unsalvageable. Grumbling, I shut the door, intending to throw everything out just before garbage day (and making Peter "We Don't Need a New Freezer" help). Out of site out of mind.

On his way out the door a few days later, Peter noticed a puddle of reddish juice by the freezer door. I rolled my eyes, told him the door must have been opened again, and moved "clean out freezer" higher on my priority list. It was when I went to clean up the mess that I realized something had gone terribly wrong: the freezer wasn't running. There was more than thawed meat inside, it was rotting meat. I hadn't really checked the freezer since deciding to throw out the contents. There was no telling how long the freezer had sat dead, it had to have been at least a few hot, summer days. There were maggots. I did NOT open the freezer door. In fact, I shut the garage door and determined that this problem was going to wait till I had backup. Backup that had opposed my new freezer idea a couple weeks before.

I will spare you the gory details. There were double layered heavy duty garbage bags, bleach filled spray bottles, a vow of vegetarianism (that lasted a whole 2 days), and a smell strong enough to gag both a mother of 6 and an emergency room doctor. You really don't need to know more. Except Peter did most of the work without even calling me for help.

Today the garbage man came and picked up our garbage (an automated system, so he didn't suffer). I sprayed down the empty garbage bin with water and bleach. Also, this morning the delivery man delivered our new freezer and carted away the old one (Peter had cleaned it well so it wasn't gross anymore- unless the picture of what it looked like before had been seared into your brain). Tomorrow I will both restock and move things out of our indoor freezer's now over-crowded half of the side-by-side combo. The best part? Our new, larger freezer has a high temperature alarm, a door ajar alarm, and a built in LOCK. Peter knows how to apologize in style.

21 comments:

  1. I will send the therapy bills to you after reading that. Ha!

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  2. ihenpecked I warned you it was gross. It was more like therapy for me to write it (share the misery and all).

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  3. Both Joshua and I laughed out loud at "a smell strong enough to gag both a mother of 6 and an emergency room doctor". You really have a way with words.

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  4. So jealous of a freezer, that is on my to buy list, right after about a million other things. I laughed out loud even though I already knew the story. :)

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  5. Claudia Thanks! Although Peter and I weren't laughing at the time, I could appreciate the ridiculousness of the situation even then.

    Davis Family It is a really nice freezer. I think we over compensated. I started using an extra freezer about the time I was pregnant with #5- it has been full ever since (and a couple of weeks without one threw off my whole cooking groove).

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  6. I couldn't live without our freezer. I keep telling Ken we need another one! Ours is small and not fancy though and it is a chest, so the lid lifts up and down not open to the side where it could be left open. I'm digging the fancy gadgets and alarms on yours though!

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  7. oh dear! I think I almost threw up in my mouth.
    (just kidding)
    Nice new freezer!

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  8. Kim It was hard to fit all the food we needed into the small side by side freezer. I cut out popsicles completely (and extra butter, cheese, roast, and chicken). I can't wait to restock today!

    Jamie It is a really nice freezer! I am thrilled with it so far(although I think anything the kids get into will be left in the indoor freezer from now on!)

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  9. We had a similar episode the other month. Mine is blamed on the 10 month old though. Cleaning up that kind of mess has it's own category though-I at least didn't have maggots to deal with.....

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  10. Oh my goodness...I just got excited butterflies in my stomach reading...I mean, not so much about the maggots but clean, bleached garbage cans, new freezers with alarms and locks?!! I can't wait to see it and maybe give it a nice, cool hug. I am so glad you got a new one. So sorry about all the old meat but you are right, Peter sure knows how to apologize.

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  11. Sick, but where are the pictures of the maggots? I figure if you get everyone that sick, they can REALLY know how you felt.

    (j/k, thanks for not putting pictures up, I have seen enough of that on CSI and Bones)

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  12. Heather A couple years ago the same thing happened to a friend of mine and remembering being unable to fathom how you begin cleaning up a mess like that. I liked sympathizing with her more than empathizing.

    emma jo I was worried I would look a little dorky with how excited I was about my freezer. I love appliance gifts (although this doesn't really count as a gift). I'm glad someone agrees with me. And I will let you hug it all you want (since you were in the garage at least the first time it started smelling, I can give you that much).

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  13. Gordon Next time I will take some pictures and email them to you.

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  14. So basically you had roadkill sitting in your hot garage over the course of a few weeks? Nice.

    My mom-in-law's freezer broke when they were out of the country, and she asked Kent's brother to bring everything to us so we could store it until she got a new freezer. He brought boxes of dripping, bagged, raw chicken; and after he left I took them right to the trash. There are just some things I'm not even willing to do for family.

    The new freezer looks nice! Must have been invented by somebody who went through the same thing as you.

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  15. This has nothing to do with the post since I didn't read it - couldn't deal with the grossness - but I was wondering how you got the tabs across the top of your blog (the ones that say Home, About Me, etc.)? I'd love to do that to my book blog ...

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  16. Wow how luck you are to get Peter to clean the mess up. i probably would have had to do it myself. UCK. Hopefully you didn't lose too much in meat. Sounds like a super freezer. Now you can store alot of locked stuff.

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  17. Mary Dripping bagged raw chicken? Sounds appetizing. I'm sure she was glad you didn't save that for her!

    Tucker Mom I was glad Peter cleaned it up. We lost at least a couple hundred dollars in food, but such is life I guess.

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  18. Susan Here are the two sites I used to do it:

    (to make the static pages)

    http://www.isimplyblog.com/add-static-pages-to-bloggercom-blogs/166/

    To make the navigation bar:
    http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/08/horizontal-menu-navigation-bar.html (This is a site I use all the time to find new things for my blog)

    Scroll down till you see "Text Link Menu Navigation Bars" If you need more help, let me know.

    I will email you this info (as soon as I find your email address). Actually I think I will just leave the link in a comment on your blog, so look for it.

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  19. I was doing ok until the maggots. ugh. So not jealous of you. But that freezer is pretty amazing. I definitely think you deserve it, and I hope Barlow is to blame for something gross like that sometime so I can get an awesome new toy! :-)

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  20. Very well told. I could have handled the funny written version if I hadn't heard the grosser version in person.

    Emma Jo, I can't believe you could get giddy over bleach after that story. I don't think there is enough bleach in the world to overcome the visions dancing, or rather creeping, through my head.

    Gross. I hope there is a happy post coming soon. I was a little queasy accepting icecream out of your delightful new freezer. But hey, icecream is icecream.

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  21. Andrea I specifically stuck the warning in there for YOU.

    twinlinebackers That's what you get for waiting so long to read, I guess. It is sad that I had to edit out the worst of the experience and it was still so gross.

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