Refrigerator

We had to go buy a new fridge today. It was our first appliance purchase together, and rather anticlimactic, even as such things go. Mr. Salted went to start some slow-cooker soup this morning and discovered the milk had gone bad. Even the milk that was still good, in the next container he opened, wasn't cold. We looked at the flyers in the Sunday paper and online a little bit. I suggested we go to Home Depot--there is one quite close to us, and when I used to do procurement for property management and bought appliances, that was usually our go-to place in a pinch. We found a standard Hotpoint with no bells or whistles for $499, spent some more of the tax return to purchase it, and it will be delivered Wednesday. I was all for buying the cheapest one there, which was some off-brand like "Acer" or "Americana", but Mr. Salted held out for the Hotpoint.

Our salesperson was nice, no high-pressure crap, a 60ish Vietnam vet. I was so glad we didn't have to say more than "we currently reside in a mobile we both hate and hope not to be in long, we just need something that works for now". The fridges you can get now are absolutely amazing, and range in price from $325 to about $2900. Designer colors or stainless, side-by-side designs, some have the freezer drawer underneath, the water machine, the icemaker; we made jokes about how someday when we live somewhere we actually like and picked out together--when we are both working again--we can also spring for a nice fridge. Mr. Salted was disappointed it couldn't be delivered tomorrow, but I told him Home Depot isn't Glinda the Good Witch. (In what universe do you go buy a fridge and receive it less than 24 hours later?) I just hope all that wonderfully healthy food that I have so dutifully shopped for doesn't go bad.

I'm slightly amused that rather than continue to attempt to chip the layers off that interminable crisper drawer, I just get to start over with a nice new one. In all fairness, many of those layers have been there since at least the Mesozoic era, long before Mr. Salted and I even met.

Given the current state of our stove, I would also rather replace than continue to clean it. Some of the burners are setting off the smoke alarms when used, despite our best repeated efforts to clear them of debris. We both have a feeling the stove will be the next to go; we have to keep a thermometer inside the oven to gauge the actual temperature, as it tends to run about 50 degrees too hot. The dinosaurs also had a hand in accumulating ancient layers of crud on that well-loved, oft-used entity, so I can contemplate its inevitable replacement free of guilt.