Out with the old...in with the tears?!

Who would have thought that getting rid of your old fridge would be such an emotional journey? Not me, that's for sure.  Yesterday, at approximately 3pm, two very sketchy, sub-contracted Sears appliance delivery guys rang the doorbell, had me sign on the dotted line, and hauled away our old Amana, (replacing her with a beautiful, brand spankin' new, black, water-in-the-door Kenmore Elite), before I even had a minute to say my goodbyes.  As I watched them aggressively toss the old fridge into the truck and abruptly drive away, I cried.

(Rewind 5 years...)


It was a sweaty, humid July morning in 2005. Out our bare, curtain-less living room window, I watched neighbors (who I had yet to meet) mowing lawns, moms filling plastic kiddie pools with hoses, and dogs laying under trees for shade. Yes, it was only nine-thirty AM, but it was already 88 degrees outside. (This was "the hottest summer in a decade," according to the news for weeks now.)  But summer wasn't the only thing in full bloom; I was seven months pregnant, expecting our first child-- a little girl-- in September. I was quickly approaching the point in pregnancy where my ankles were swelling daily, rolling over in bed required assistance, and urinating was my most frequent pastime.  And this heat didn't help my cause at all. "Ughhhh," I thought to myself, "looks like another day in the house."


Jeff had already left for work at his new job in Cambridge, and so I was alone in this barren, empty, echoing shell of a house, contemplating the best use of my day. The possibilities were truly endless, as we were brand new, first-time homeowners and there was still plenty of unpacking/organizing/cleaning to be done. Sure, we had brought a few of 'the basics' to get us through the first week in the new house-- toilet paper, a few articles of clothing, our mattress, toiletries, and some limited paper goods- but beyond this, the house was completely bare. Bare to the point that every ring of the phone, every dropped penny, every cough, and every sneeze echoed as it bounced off the hardwood floors onto the naked walls.  The smell of polyurethane still lingered heavily from the floor-refinishing a few weeks prior, and because of this I had the windows open and the central air cranked on-- something that Jeff probably would have loved to reprimand me about daily, were it not for my pregnant circumstance.  But these days, he just wanted to see me comfortable, and if this meant a massive dent in our electric bill (and oodles of wasted cold air, quite literally, out the window,) then so be it.  As my pregnant belly groaned and sloshed with hunger pangs, interrupting my thoughts, I instinctively opened the refrigerator door: Creeeeeeak.  But the blank, empty shelves in the fridge just taunted me more.  And this fridge, let me tell  you, was quite the sight for sore eyes; almond in color, wood-paneled handles, and some very interesting stains, dents, and scratches throughout. The deli & vegetable drawers wouldn't open or close properly, always getting hung up on the sticky, uneven metal glides; the grill at the bottom of the fridge was completely broken off, nowhere to be found; and-- the cherry on top? The previous owners never so much as cleaned it out before handing the house keys over to us. Which meant sticky areas of ketchup, chocolate rings under the spot where the Hershey's syrup must have lived, and white flaky debris from the milk cap, still fresh and abundant.  It was louder than any appliance I had ever experienced, and would erupt in a ceremonious "hummmmmmmmmm, hummmmmmmmm, buzzzzzzzzzz" chant every other hour or so.  In retrospect, I was now wishing that we had it written into the P & S last month that the fridge must be GONE by the time we moved in, but alas it was a fridge, which was better than no fridge at all. And so, with our purchase of the house, we were now the proud new owners of this refrigeration masterpiece.  ("...but just for a year or so, til we can afford to replace it," we told ourselves. Ha! Famous last words...)

"Today's mission," I thought to myself,  "will be to clean out this gross fridge, top to bottom, and have it stocked with tons of food by the time Jeff gets home at 5. He'll be proud of my ambition to take on such a production and maybe I can squeeze a pedicure out of the deal!"  And off to work I started.  Rubber cleaning gloves, every Clorox product imaginable, bleach, Lysol wipes, scrubbing bubbles, 2 new sponges, a bucket of hot water, and 3 hours of sweaty, "my pregnant belly's in the way" hard work later, and she was as "pretty" as she was going to get. Still embarrassing, still noisy, still circa 1979, still the color of a Caprice Classic station wagon-- but at least she was clean. And she was ours.

Next step: off to Shaw's!  And so I went, pulling 2 full carriages and spending $400 on our first grocery order for our first house. (don't judge- it really adds up quickly when you need to buy all kinds of food plus every basic thing imaginable; spices for the spice rack, salt & pepper, baking goods, all paper goods, etc...) I felt such a sense of pride as I drove home, SUV bursting at the seems, to unload all of the goods. This was unequivocally the first step to transforming this shell of a house, to a home, and I couldn't wait to get started...

The unloading process took me three hours that day. THREE HOURS!  Picture a wobbly, round, swollen, pregnant me, and enough bags to fill an entire SUV....now add excruciatingly humid weather, and you can understand why. I did treat myself to many "mini-breaks," while I unloaded the car to snack on my latest pregnancy addiction-- Kit-Kat bites. (Basically, kit-kat bars chopped into bite-sized morsels of chocolate-y, wafer-y goodness. I was immediately in love.) I shamelessly finished half of the bag that day, and placed the remaining 1/2 a bag in the newly clean freezer. By four-thirty in the afternoon, I had completely finished Operation-Clean-and-Stock-Fridge. I was quite impressed with myself as I stared inside the fridge, finally bearing stocked shelves, overflowing drawers and compartments erupting in a colorful rainbow or yummy goodness.

When Jeff walked in the door about a half-an-hour later, he immediately noticed the pleasantly bleach-y, clean smell in the kitchen.  "Uh-oh, what'd you go and clean now?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at me as he hung up his work badge on the key-hook. And like a kindergartener at show and tell, I excitedly motioned towards the fridge with my head.  When Jeff opened the fridge (Creeeeeeak!) and saw the sparkling condition of the inside, as well as the abundance of food, he grinned a huge smile from ear to ear, and then hugged me. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!" he said. "But you shouldn't have done that, that was a lot of work for you guys!" With that, he rubbed my belly and said his typical hellos to his daughter, using my bellybutton as his microphone into her amniotic-fluid filled world. That night, we cooked our first meal together in our house-- spaghetti and meatballs-- with a yummy green salad on the side. And garlic bread. Scrumptious.  I can still picture us sitting at the kitchen table that night, walls echoing as our forks and knives clanked the plates in that bare, bare house.  It truly seems like yesterday...


And so today, as I sit here in my cozy living room recliner typing this, I look around in amazement that somehow over the past 5 years, our walls are no longer bare; they are painted, and warm, and inviting, decorated with framed photographs of our wedding, our children, our friends, and construction paper preschool artwork of giraffes and candy canes.  Five years later, and the polyurethane smell from those shiny, new floors has all but disappeared, (and their once pristine, glossy condition now bears "character" blemishes, dents & scratches that only we would be able to explain)  Five years-- five years of anniversaries, birthdays, play-dates, friends, family, backyard barbecues, laughter, tears, the little moments, and big ones... Five years later, and that growing bulge in my belly from that hot July day is now a self-sufficient, walking, talking, articulate, silly, hula-hooping, joke-telling ballerina who loves Barbies and her little brother. Five years, and those neighbors mowing their lawns and filling up pools have become like family to us, exchanging Christmas cookies, crock-pot recipes, and eventually, tears over glasses of wine. Five years....and this house, with all of its imperfections and glitches, has become a home. Our home.


So in conclusion, this silly little memory of that one particular hazy summer day-- of sweating more than I've ever sweated, and scrubbing more than I've ever scrubbed, all for the purpose of cleaning out a 30-year old fridge with yucky, sticky ketchup remnants from the previous owners- may seem trivial to all of you.  But to me, it encapsulates a very precious sliver of time in our lives together- before the chaos & craziness of children, before the sleepless nights, before we were in permanent auto-pilot mode living off Hazelnut K-cups & a Keurig machine.  That fridge-cleaning milestone was truly the first step in turning this house into a home, and it is absolutely unbelievable to me that 1/2 a decade has passed here already.  Thank you, Amana 18, for unintentionally inciting a trip down memory lane, and for the five wonderful years of fridgedom that you bestowed upon us.

P.S. and just in case you were curious? Yes, that is in fact the bag of Kit-Kat bites that I devoured 1/2 of that July day.  I had a few the day that I went into labor with Ava and just never threw them away, so now they are a decorative, nostalgic, permanant component of our freezer  :-)