The new refrigerator

The new refrigerator arrived today. We ordered it 3 months ago and it finally made its way through the supply chain to our house. The thing about refrigerators is that they’re not exciting. They’re utilities. When they don’t work right, they’re horrible. When they work right, you don’t even know they exist.

Getting a new refrigerator sounds like a simple task. It’s not. Before it arrives, you have to clear the furniture to make a pathway for the delivery guys to carry in the huge machine. You have to empty the old refrigerator and stash the frozen food into ice chests. You have to move the the unfrozen food to your tabletops and counter tops or put it in the empty dishwasher.

When the burly hipster guys carry out the old ice box, you see that it was covering 10 years of dirt, dust, and grease. The wall and floor are filthy. You scramble to wipe away what you can with paper towels. What you can’t wipe away, you’ll just cover it with the new box. If you ever sell the house, you can give it a real cleaning then. You’re thinking these thoughts when you see they’re coming right back with the new box.

After they leave, you have to reassemble everything you’ve disassembled. After you do that, you start putting all of the food back into the box. That’s when you realize the the new box is smaller than the old box. Easy solution — you throw away food you know that you never intended to eat. That does the trick.

Then you go take a one-hour nap.