Saying Goodbye to the GE Freezer

It's hard to believe it was 10 years ago that we purchased this GE chest freezer. It was such an improvement over the old monster (link below when we said goodbye to that one). Every single time I opened this I felt thankful for its reliability and the light, and the ability to save food. Genuinely grateful for the ease of use.

But the time was right to let someone else have it who will get some good use out of it. I'd never used it again after the horrible mess I came home to in September 2021 to discover that the power had been out for days. We sure don't need that much freezer space any more, and it would have cost a fortune to fill it so that it would run efficiently.

I had sort of forgotten how much we had to take the pantry apart to get it in or out. My entire camping equipment shelves had to be removed, two of the regular pantry shelves had to come out, and all the recycling bins which would be behind me in this picture.

All that stuff had to go somewhere. Right now it's piled in two places. Spread along the edges of every aisle in the upstairs of the house. For example:

Or, it's on the porch (haha- good thing I cleared that off, right?). We might get rain tonight, so I covered it with tarps.

Now the freezer space is empty. But what a mess. There is mold under where the freezer was from that fatal thawing. The mouse poop is impressive everywhere. It's going to take more than one day to clean, sort and replace all this stuff, or at least all I plan to keep. I suspect there is stuff even I am willing to give up.

Ultimately, I'm hoping to put in some more shelves and get the tools and hardware sorted even better. But that's not happening right away.

In other news, I did client work this morning. I had a Zoom meeting. I walked to town and did a couple of errands. Other than that, this project filled all the rest of the time. I am glad to have this accomplished, but am kind of dreading how long the cleaning is going to take, and I can't put that off. The house is too full of displaced stuff. Even I am not willing to walk around that many piles indefinitely. I can carefully squeeze into the bathroom, and there is a narrow aisle to the microwave. The refrigerator door needs to open, so that aisle is a little wider. Every canning jar is filthy. Of course, they would have to be washed just before any use, but I hate to put them back so dirty. This is going to be a big project.

See Saying Goodbye to the Crosley Custom

Freezer is DONE!

  At long last all the horrid parts of the horrid job of emptying and cleaning out the big freezer are done! Basically, I thawed one sink full of containers a day, composted the stuff, and washed the containers. Did the last load yesterday, and cleaned the infrastructure today.

Just for the record, I had to throw away an estimated $553 worth of food. Sigh. Not enough to meet the insurance deductible. Just one of those painful losses. The fruits and things that I had spent a lot of time picking and processing are what hurt the most to toss out. Everything that could be saved easily fits in the small freezer of the fridge.

There was a lot of spoiled meat juice on the wood frame that I had built to hold the baskets, but a good scrubbing with clorox pretty much took care of that. It spent the night outside. I was hopeful that no animals would come chew on it, and none did.

I'm not even going to plug the freezer in and use it until after the big hike. I wouldn't be able to get enough food in it in the next two months to make it even remotely efficient. And Om doesn't really keep any things in it.

In other news: I am just about done with all the formatting for Dead Mule Swamp Singer. I also worked on the trailer this afternoon and made some good progress. Perhaps that will be tomorrow's post. My list is up to 58 things to do by 12/1, and I have crossed off 8. TO DO- 50 things: 65 days.

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Play and Work- Both Freezing

 
I went out skiing again today. The goal was to ski longer than Saturday. I don't think that happened, but I worked harder, so I get points. Still cold enough that the snow is great. If the wind doesn't fill in the tracks, tomorrow could be a nice ski day!

When you groom the trail by skiing through whatever's there it's a lot of work!



Today I went down all four of my hills (intermediate level at best). Saturday I skipped the steepest one, but believe me, I could not go too fast to be dangerous today!

This is hill number two. I'm about to go down. I took the picture because I always think it's interesting that the deer use my trails even though it doesn't look like a lot of difference from where it was not mowed. I'm not the only mammal who appreciates less resistance to movement.



On the work side of the equation, I defrosted the freezer. Not bad. This is the one we got four years ago, and this is the first time I've had to defrost it. But it wasn't sealing properly and stuff on the top wasn't freezing solid.

Step 1- put everything in the alternate freezer. (Ha, ha. No, there's no dog food, it's only a box. Didn't even see the label till I looked at the picture!)



Step 2- there is no way to turn this freezer off except unplug it. That was not an easy task, but I managed it. Had to lift and move two large pieces of plywood that were stored behind the freezer, then pull it out, climb over, and unplug it!

Step 3- remove the frost/ice. Three sink fulls.



Mission accomplished.



Oh yeah, except I had to put everything back and put all the food back in. Got rid of a few things that were so old and freezer-burned that even I won't eat them. Boiled some pork hocks to make soup. A little freezer-burned, but I can deal with it.

Not bad. Pat myself on back.

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Step 7 and Some Perks

 
We've worked on Step 7 of the Freezer Project in little pieces all week, but it appears that the entire thing is DONE. The final part of Step 7 was putting the recycle tubs back in place, which I did this afternoon. Along the way there was a lot of cleaning (not everything... but everything that had been moved). That includes a good cleaning of the dehydrator. Much overdue, and it took a while.

Now for a couple of perks of the new freezer. Just as a reminder, here it is again.



It's currently fuller than in this picture because, this week, the refrigerator decided to develop a problem. Thankfully, it can be fixed, but while the part is being ordered all the small freezer stuff is also crammed in the new chest freezer.

Today, when I want to the pantry to get something from the new freezer, I realized two wonderful things about the new one.

#1- It has a light. I knew that, but hadn't thought about the fact that I won't have to turn on the room light to get something from the freezer. Nice.

#2- I never thought about this perk at all until... When I opened the lid I automatically leaned forward to rest the lid against the top of my head to hold it open. Wait! I don't have to do that any more. This lid stays open by itself. Nicer! That old lid was so heavy it could give you a headache. And the stick we kept handy to hold it open for longer searches in the depths had a nasty habit of popping out and dropping the lid on the searcher.

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Saying Goodbye to the Crosley Custom

 
Today was steps 1,2,4,5,6,8 and 9 of the Freezer Project. Did you notice it now has capital letters? This has been a major accomplishment. Actually, it turned out that step 3 wasn't quite done because we also had to remove all the stuff from my camping equipment shelves, and the shelf unit itself.

First, let's say hello to the Crosley Custom. We inherited this freezer when we bought our former house in 1971. The previous owners had no interest in hefting this baby out of the basement. Here's how it looked then. How it looked to us was wonderful, despite already being about 20 years old with a tricky semi-broken latch. That means it has served for about 60 years. I know old people always say this, but "they don't build 'em like that any more."

Next, there are going to be too many pictures today. Get over it. This was one heck of a project and you are going to appreciate it with us.

When we moved up here on the hill in 1992 several men wrestled the freezer into a front end loader and drove it up here, then managed to get it in the spot we now want it to vacate. Friend Doug came to do the heaviest of the lifting and Om is poised to help push.



The first goal is about 20 feet away, the bed of Doug's truck.



Don't think that I wasn't involved. It's just that when we were all hauling on the thing no one could take pictures, so here I am proving to you that we took breaks between each "1,2,3,lift." You can see we've made progress.



We are tough enough! In the truck it went. Doug and I took it to the recycle place while Om cleaned the floor where it had been.



The recycle weight ticket said it weighed 400 pounds! By contrast, Doug and I just picked the new one up and carried it into the space. Not even difficult. And here's the new one all loaded up. A new inventory sheet is made and we now have some projects to eat up aging food items.



And even with the charge for disposal of the freon we got enough for the scrap metal value that we went out for dinner (nothing fancy). But it was worth a small celebration.

Now we have step 7 left to do. Om says he will work on that tomorrow while I am at work.

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Starting the Freezer Project with Step 3

 
We started emptying the pantry shelves today so that the old freezer can be removed. This is the contents of three shelves. Of course the mice have been running all over everything, so it all had to be washed. We also cleared the floor and did some measuring to determine what else would have to be moved.

One set of metal shelves with all my camping gear on them will have to be shuffled. That won't be as bad as it sounds because most of that is in boxes or tubs.

I'm rambling about this because it doesn't look like nearly a big enough pile for all the time it took to get it cleaned and on the table.

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Not a Thing of Beauty, but hopefully...

 
Not a thing of beauty, but hopefully it will be a joy forever. At least as long of a forever as we need.

This is actually the saga of the old (working but declared to be walking dead) freezer. I'll tell you all about it when it leaves the premises. Today's project is part of the lead-up to that event.

So, we found a used freezer that was the right size. (A little smaller, but close enough.) I bought it two months ago, and managed to get it here when Robert and I did the tree day, because he has a truck. However...

We got a great deal on it because it has no internal storage baskets. The baskets in the old freezer would fit, but there was no way to support them. So, I figured out a way to make a frame to hold them. With snow outside, I have nowhere to work except in the living room. Not enough space, had to use a chair for a sawhorse. Made a big mess.



But it's done. It is definitely nothing lovely, but it will do the job. We have two baskets, and this will allow them to slide along the upper level.

It takes up more space than I would like, but it will work.



Next step will be the big one. We have to find another friend with a truck and a muscle, since Om isn't supposed to lift much any more. The following will all have to happen on the same day, so the food won't thaw- although if the temperature is nice and cold we can put it outside.

1. Move new freezer back outside (it's currently taking up every bit of open floor space)
2. Empty old freezer contents into boxes
3. Empty and remove shelves from one entire side of pantry
4. Wrestle old freezer out (this one is going to be really bad)
5. Move new freezer in
6. Put food in new freezer
7. Replace pantry shelves and replace all stuff (sigh)
8. Wrestle old freezer into truck
9. Take old freezer to recycle.

Guess what the blog post will be about the day THAT all happens. Stay tuned.

I'm guessing step 7 might actually happen last, since I'm sure whoever we get to help won't feel like hanging around for that part of the project.

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