The Hazards of a Bottom-Mount Freezer

When we first realized we were going to be buying our house, and doing a massive renovation, we went appliance shopping in SoHo. Travis took me into a deluxe shop that featured European appliances. He marched right over to the smallest wall oven I’ve ever seen... literally, this thing was the size of a toaster oven. This was the oven he thought we should buy. I would have laughed, but this is Travis and I knew he was serious. I pointed out all the problems with buying such a small oven, and he quickly rebutted each one: My cookie sheets wouldn’t fit in it (I could buy new ones!), I couldn’t cook more than one thing at a time (we could get TWO of them!), it wouldn’t accommodate a frozen pizza (we’ll have our pizza delivered!), cooking a Thanksgiving dinner was out of the question (you’ve never cooked one anyway!). Besides, he pointed out, listen to how nicely it “thuds shut”. Definitely something I’m looking for in an oven.

After I had a meltdown, he agreed we could get a slightly larger version of the oven. The next problem was the refrigerator. The one Travis wanted was about 18” wide, again made by a German company and designed for small apartments. I couldn’t understand why we were moving to the suburbs so we could have smaller appliances. Travis and our architect convinced me that the small fridge was the EPITOME of our new kitchen layout, and simply must be used. I was promised I could have another, full sized fridge in the basement to hold juice and whatever wouldn’t fit in the upstairs fridge (basically anything bigger than a piece of string cheese), so I wouldn’t have to go to the store every day. Walking up and down the stairs 20x per day would be much better!

Imagine how thrilled I was when we realized that our architect’s marvelous plan, which involved moving the powder room halfway across the house, among other things, was way out of our price range. We quickly scaled back the renovation, and in our new design, I negotiated a full-sized fridge. (As it turns out, there is one rebuttal that trumps anything Travis can come up with... “Resale value!”)

We picked a great one; it’s a Jenn Air stainless steel cabinet-depth model, with the freezer on the bottom. My Nana used to have a bottom-mount freezer, and I’ve always thought they were cool. I just didn’t realize how accessible they made everything IN the freezer to kids.

For example, C has a friend J who comes over to our house frequently. It took J about 3 seconds to figure out that he could help himself to the contents of our freezer, which typically holds popsicles, ice cream, frozen Gogurt, and other treats within reach of small hands. On many occasions I’ve found the freezer left open by one of the kids, as they were browsing around and forgot to close it. My kids have pretty much learned and accepted that they must still have permission to eat the junk I keep in the freezer, but one day S and her friend E used up all the ice making packs for their animals, and there was water seeping out of plastic bags all over the house for days. Another hazard is that the kids use the handle on the freezer as a step stool to access things in the fridge. I’m pretty sure the designer of the Jenn Air fridge didn’t account for the weight of a 45 pound girl on the handle of the freezer. I’ve told them about a million times not to stand on the handle but conveniently, they keep forgetting.

The most recent event just happened the other night. Scout announced after dinner that she was going to make herself a milk shake, and since I was on my computer in the office, I told her to go for it and wished her luck. All seemed to be going well until I heard her exclaim, “Oh, no!” I yelled out, “What happened?” and she replied, “I think I used the wrong milk.” I assumed she had gotten my soy milk, and hoisted my giant body up and into the kitchen for further investigation. Turns out she had gotten the buttermilk by mistake, and after dousing her carefully scooped ice cream with it, had taken a big bite. Yuck.