My fridge is basically ruining my life.

Pretty much.

You know how normal people walk over to their fridge, open it up, get what they want, and close the fridge again? Not in this house. Nope. Our fridge is special. It is like a fridge in a camper, in that the freezer is inside of the fridge. But unlike a camper, it is on 24/7, not just a couple weeks at a time. And by the time our fridge has been running for a month or so, the freezer has gotten so iced up that the ice starts to overflow out of the freezer and into the fridge. Once it hits the fridge, it begins to melt, while making the fridge colder than it needs to be, thus soaking everything (egg cartons are the worst!) as well as freezing it all at the same time (also not great for eggs. Have you ever tried to make cookies with frozen eggs? They don't crack quite as nicely). Anyway, the freezer ice doesn't melt quite quickly enough when it gets into the fridge, because it very quickly expands so much that the door of the fridge can no longer close properly, thus creating this:



This blocks the fridge from opening. So anytime we want to get a glass of milk or a slice of cheese, we have to first move the barricade, get what we want, then shove the barricade firmly back into place and make sure it is doing it's job to keep the fridge shut. It may only take a few seconds longer than a usual trip to the fridge, but it is enough to drive me crazy. Unfortunately the only solution is to empty the fridge of everything, then turn it off and thaw it out. This is a huge task. It entails filling our not quite large enough coolers with everything that MUST ABSOLUTELY be kept cold (basically everything in the fridge. This is a problem in itself, because our freezer is too small to keep more than a couple measly trays of ice in it at a time, which is hardly enough to keep two coolers full of fridge/freezer food cold), then becoming overly frustrated when everything does not fit in the coolers, and trying to find room in the egg fridge Melinda keeps in the garage for everything else. Once this is all finished, the fridge AND freezer must thaw out, which takes approximately one full day, and causes mass amounts of puddles on our kitchen floor (I do keep a towel at the base of the fridge at all times, but it doesn't take long for it to soak up as much water as it can handle). No matter how much I try to control the flooding, everything is still damp by the time the freezer is empty of ice, and it is no easy task drying off the underside of a fridge (also, it gets so dirty under the fridge, and I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist)! Anyway, once the ice is all gone, I feel the need to clean the fridge completely, because it only makes sense to do so when it is empty and thawed out. Then once everything is perfectly spotless, I can turn the fridge back on, transport everything back into it, be satisfied to have a normal fridge, and then do this ALL OVER AGAIN NEXT MONTH.

I refuse to go through all of that on a monthly basis.

So I don't.

Hence the barricade.

Maybe we will get a ton of snow and the power will go out and I can throw all the food onto our porch and let the fridge thaw while we have no power. For now I will just wait until that day and continue to be frustrated with a fridge that will not close.