Defrosting a freezer compartment and relighting a pilot light

This was a fairly interesting, though mostly routine housekeeping day, beginning with writing a minor rant to a few people about a church "bored" meeting last night. After that time pounding the poor keys of the laptop, I needed to do something much different so slid down the stairs into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and noticed the freezer compartment was mostly built-up ice.

This fridge is ancient, one of those with a small freezer compartment at the top, accessed only by opening the fridge door itself. The freezer doesn't hold a lot anyway, and so much space taken up by ice wasn't good.

I remembered my mom defrosting the freezer years ago and remembered she used a pan of boiling water inside. So, I unplugged the fridge, took everything out of the freezer, boiled a big pot of water, stuck it inside the freezer, and shut the doors. After about 8 minutes, I checked the progress. Sure enough, ice was breaking off and sliding into the plastic tray under the freezer. Perfect. Since there was still some stuck at the back, I boiled the water again and repeated the process. Oh, how beautiful! All done. I dumped the tray of water outside in my newly planted little garden, dried off the inside of the freezer, and stuck everything back in. And the whole process only took about 30 minutes.

Someone on a Simple Living Discussion Forum had this to say: "Enjoy, knowing a traditional freezer does not dry out your frozen food as a frost-free would, nor spend the energy trying to stay frost free."

I just want to be able to keep ice cream for longer than a day or so without it turning sloppy. It's a shame to have to eat it so fast. Right. Uh-huh.

Oh, and I also relit the pilot on the gas stove. Piece of cake. Next time I won't get so engrossed in writing a rant that I forget there are pinto beans boiling over.

Now back to reading Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Gibbs and Bolger. Good stuff.