and she’ll soon realize she has to rethink the entire decorating style of her kitchen….

In case you haven’t heard me whine about this already, (and I haven’t done so here – Yet) my fridge died. It was a slow death that was really very sad because we just bought the fridge 7 years ago. The death started about a month ago with a mysterious yellowish fluid at the bottom of my fridge. I thought maybe something was leaking, and I cleaned out my fridge. I didn’t find anything that could cause the yellow stuff, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I have children after all, which means mysteries happen.

But things quit working or rather quit keeping things cool. It started with my freezer, and it slowly moved on to the regular fridge. A camping trip allowed us to empty the fridge and leave it unplugged in case anything was frozen up. When we came back, I plugged it back in. Within a day or so, I realized the fridge was running but not keeping anything cool. I moved everything to the camper fridge, and I threw away anything questionable.

Which meant that today, hubby and I went fridge shopping. Back in March, I had rearranged our kitchen and placed our fridge kiddy-corner from where it used to be. Hubby was still getting used to going to the opposite side of the kitchen to grab something from the fridge.

When we went shopping, we were looking for certain features. I wanted a freezer on the bottom, and I would have really liked a French-door fridge, but I figured it was WAY out of our price range. I also didn’t want to buy the brand of the fridge we were replacing. Still, just a freezer on the bottom is a pricey addition to the fridge search. All of our appliances are white, and I didn’t expect we’d change that.

Then, we actually went shopping. Lowe’s had a French-door fridge on sale for under $1,000, which was about the price I expected to pay for the freezer-bottom fridge I was looking for. Plus, the salesman pointed out that there was a dent in the fridge, so he was pretty sure we’d be able to get even more off the price. But it was not white. It was stainless-look.

I was really loving the idea of a French-door fridge, but I was a little leary of the dent, and the stainless-look wasn’t fooling me. The dent was in the top corner, and it had also cracked the hinge on the inside. I was worried about how the crack would deteriorate over time. I can handle a dent, but I didn’t need a door that would fall off. But it was the French-door style!

In the meantime, I wasn’t seeing anything else I wanted. I kept wandering the aisles checking everything out, and hubby wasn’t sure he wanted a fridge with the freezer on the bottom. He was worried freezer items would be buried and forgotten. Plus, my daughter Amanda was with us, and she wanted a fridge with a water/ice dispenser although I wasn’t so sure about that.

Hubby saw a side-by-side that he liked, and he wanted me to look at it. It had the water dispenser Amanda wanted, which is usually what I don’t like about the side-by-sides — they take up all the freezer space. But Whirlpool has this new ice maker thing that is in the door and doesn’t take up space. Plus, it was stainless-steel (the real stuff), 25.4 cubic feet and under $1,000, and the salesman pointed out that certain brands (including Whirlpool) were 10 percent off today, and we were sold for under $900.

Besides the price, I am in love with the new fridge. It is huge even for a side-by-side. It has a water-filtered water dispenser and an ice dispenser. The water/ice panel is fancy and computerized with little lights, and it has a little indicator that will tell us when we need to replace the water filter.

I knew when we bought it that the new fridge would not fit where the old fridge went, but I kept an open mind. I was hoping it would fit, but it didn’t. The space is 32 inches, and the new fridge is over 36 inches wide. The new shelving units I had installed where the fridge used to be (before March) had to be removed. The new fridge fits in the original old spot, but there is no longer any room for shelves next to it.

In the meantime, the new shelves won’t fit where the old fridge was at either. They are wider than 32 inches. This is a problem because before the old fridge, the space held a dishwasher, so the flooring in our kitchen didn’t extend to this corner. This means we will have to do one of the following:

1. Buy a new dishwasher;
2. Buy a new base cupboard; OR
3. Install new flooring

OK, new flooring is out of the question. A new dishwasher would have to be a Whirlpool stainless steel to match, which means another $600 at least and that isn’t happening. So we need to buy a nice base cupboard that will fit. OK, that will take care of that corner.

But then where am I going to put the pantries, and if I don’t figure out where to put them, where am I going to put all of the stuff that was in the pantries? Will I be able to fit the stuff into the new arrangement? My kitchen is only 12×12, and it has two doorways including one very large doorway, so there isn’t a lot of space to work with to begin with, and the new fridge is huge.

Now I have to figure out a way to make everything fit and keep the extra storage space without spending any more money (or at least not very much money). After all, now I need to save up to replace my white stove and microwave with the stainless-steel versions…. I’m not in a hurry to do that, but it will be a goal.