The following originally appeared on 8/19/08 at Exit 51.
Busting At The Seams
No, not those seams. I mean my Frigidaire.
This is what happens when you go on South Beach. Your refrigerator fills up with all kinds of food to the point that you can’t cram another thing in it. You just have to eat your way out.
And the freezer? Let’s not talk about the freezer. It’s absolute madness. That’s my polite way of saying I can’t find a damn thing in there.
Up until the kitchen was renovated, I had always been a top-freezer girl. I knew no other existence. I was a master at maximizing the frozen food to available space ratio. I had the defrosting sequence of my apartment freezer down to a science (freezer set to off, two large pots of boiling water strategically placed, water reboiled as needed to melt one inch thick ice and three inches of frost).
But when it came time to pick out new appliances, we were seduced by ice and water in the door. We wanted it so I searched and searched until I found a side by side refrigerator that would fit in the unbelievably small opening we had for it. And life was good.
No sloppy ice trays in the freezer that nobody ever seems to remember to fill up. No ginormous Pur dispenser that had to be lugged to the sink for daily refills. Nope, we had ice and water at the push of a lever. Our water was cold and our ice was plentiful.
Then the reality of side by side life showed itself. The storage compartments on the inside of the door are dreadfully small. I’m lucky if I can squeeze a single box of frozen vegetables in one. And whereas before I could pretty easily see all the contents of my freezer, life in side by side land requires an all out expedition to find out what’s in the back of the box. I’m sure that if I emptied out its contents right now I’d find something that I was sure had been lost months ago.
Really, I need a better system to get along with this side by side. My current method of doing a dance for the freezer gods to please let me just get one more box of frozen peas or two more steaks in there isn’t working so well. Perhaps a treasure map is the answer? Or do you think I can tag all of my frozen goods with LoJack?
Bon Appetit Hon 
Ahhh! Perfect timing for this post. I was just lamenting on Twitter yesterday on the state of my freezer. I too have a side-by-side and I do not like. Someday when the bastard ever dies (which by the way, is almond, and the rest of my appliances are black & stainless), I want one of those new ones with the freezer drawer on the bottom and the side-by-side doors on the top and water & ice in the door. Best of all worlds! Oh, and yeah – my stupid side-by-side has no water in the door and I still have a Brita pitcher to lug around. Boo.
Jennifer, I didn’t see your freeze tweets yesterday. Could you make the case that old almond is an energy vampire and that buying a new, more efficient (it’s my understanding that bottom freezer are way more efficient) model would be a smart investment?
Bottom freezer with ice and water in the door? You just described my dream machine.
I too have a too little space in the fridge issue, since my fridge is smaller then standard but it has to house at least 3 gallons of milk for the kids and beer that no one drinks. At times there is no way out other then another fridge. On the other hand LG makes this really cool fridge that has 4 compartments and you can choose how you want to use them (set up different tempo in each), so if you have more fresh food you can have them all fridge, or you can make them all frozen food, or any mixture of these.
On your picture above it looks like you may be able to fit another shelve between the top two, maybe for the soda (without boxes), other then that maybe color coding. Good luck.
Polwig, it’s a constant struggle to make this fridge and freezer work to meet my needs. In a perfect world we’d have a second chest freezer but sadly we don’t have the space. I keep telling myself it will happen in the next house.
Teeeheee, too funny Wendi 🙂 Good luck with the fridge/freezer girlfriend 🙂
Oh Anna, that side by side is a lost cause. Maybe the next house, whenever that may be, will accommodate a more Wendi friendly fridge.