When all else fails, try something dodgy

This weekend my fridge door didn’t want to close. This was my trusty old Defy which I had bought for R500 from my old landlord and had cared for one of the most crucial ingredients for life’s happiness: milk for our tea and coffee. Unschooled in the ways of repairing domestic electronics, I called for my boyfriend Grant to fix the door.  Grant lives with me, knows how to fix the washing machine, install the dishwasher, has a toolbox and is thus very useful to have around. He also kills bugs, which is a bonus, but then picks them up and chases me around the flat with it, which is not so great. But I digress. On closer inspection of the fridge after pulling out the vegetable drawers, which I could have done, we discovered that the back of the fridge was covered in a mini-iceberg: a slab of ice had engulfed the fridge so that the drawers could no longer go all the way to the back and knocked on the fridge door so it could not longer close.  This was a problem. We could not turn off the fridge and defrost it as we had just gone shopping and it was full of food.  A common domestic problem, but what is a reasonable solution?  What Grant and I proceeded to do could not by any lengths be called reasonable, but it did work.

First we poured boiling water over the ice which made a mess of the kitchen floor but did little to melt the ice. Then Grant got out my hairdryer, which goes up to 3000 watts so it does pack a fair bit of power, and blasted away. But that didn’t work so well either.  The ice was melting at a painstakingly slow rate. Suddenly my fear of global warming destroying the polar ice-caps diminished. If a hair dryer blasting away at an open fridge in the middle of summer didn’t melt ice five centimeters thick, would a massive behemoth of ice be in danger of an increase of centigrade in temperature? But again, I digress. In a fit of desperation I reached for a butter knife and a bottle of Bovril and started chiseling away at the ice until I got enough ice out for the door to close.  This was very dodgy. I could have seriously damaged the fridge had the ice not been so thick. Even Grant hair-drying the fridge could have led to electrocution. I had several strategically place dishcloths to avoid this, but one can never be too sure.  We are waiting to our food to finish and them we will defrost the fridge properly. I am told that this should be done at least 2 times a year. Who knew? Spread the word people. One step at a time to being a responsible adult.