The saga of the modern icebox

I'm of the generation that grew up with people purchasing an appliance and taking it along with them if they moved since large appliances often lasted 20 years, and if something did go wrong, a service call did not place someone in the position of for just a little bit more, one might as well just throw it out and buy new.

Or better yet I can look back on the first electric appliances that my grandparents bought, for instance a 1956 Philco refrigerator that when they did move to a smaller newly built house in '68, those appliances wound up being a part of a second kitchen in the cellar only because the new house came with appliances, and couldn't accommodate the older style full sized stove (by this time stoves had shrunk to a 30 inch standard).  Up until the early 90s that Philco was still running down in the cellar when my grandmother sold the house and moved in with my brother, and the stove had continued to be in use whenever large gatherings required more cooking space, it was simply too hot to heat up the kitchen on the main floor, or during canning season.

I guess these days most people don't even give it a second thought, though, since many as a matter of habit and keeping up with ever changing trends simply always buy new every few years as they move and with all the renovation mania that television is constantly serving us up, but there are a few of us that are finding out that lifespan of these newer appliances is creeping downward at an alarming rate, and through this sour economic time, many more are finding that out as well.

With more and more frequency it seems to be sheer luck to get more than 7 years out of a refrigerator, and looking at the tons of complaints posted on the internet, it seems like many are even experiencing major repairs or units going out already by 3 and 4 years.  When my mother had replaced the original refrigerator in her condo that was very likely going on 20 years old, the new one didn't even make it 2 years before a $300 circuit board needed to be replaced. 

Of course for me, I bought a fairly expensive model, which in the past, and reputation of the brand, one would have expected to last at least 20 years as well.  I even went so far as to get one with a door freezer rather than a pull out drawer thinking of long term reliability, with less to break or go wrong in the future, but with all the mergers and buyouts, and corporations constantly striving to cut costs and increase production, I should feel happy now that I actually got 8 years out of it and had the privilege of paying twice the price of a bare bones model?

And of course the big question remains, just how green is it to buy a supposedly energy efficient model that is supposed to save you money when it's a throw away item with a marginal lifespan?

It's really making me think and rethink about getting off this merry-go-round of consumerism.  Though even in this, some of the old methods of saving money and energy are becoming difficult.  For instance, where people may have once used freezers outdoors, or in an unheated garage (refrigerators as well), more and more the allowable temperature range of operating these appliances is narrowing.  In fact I have seen some that should not be operated lower than 50 or 55 degrees, and one that even said it could be run in an area with no higher than 80 degrees in temperature, so in other words have a heat producing appliance in a carefully climate controlled environment and should summer come along, as it invariably does, you better have air conditioning running as well.

It really is a shame, especially since I live in an area that for half the year I could get away with keeping frozen things outdoors most of the winter, though these days it's not as consistently below zero as it used to be, and for refrigerated items I could likely do with just something that had temperature controlled fans to bring in cold air as needed.  And in that it does also beg the question of why in all this supposed move towards greener technologies that some major manufacturer can't come up with some easily installed unit that takes advantage of sending the extra heat a refrigerator produces to an outdoor coil where it doesn't add heat to the home, and in winter takes advantage of the cooler temperatures outdoors resulting in less use of the compressor, and certainly components could be made in a modular fashion so that they could simply be snapped out and new ones plugged back in so one didn't have to trash an entire unit when a major component failed.  But let's face it, corporations aren't interested in selling less, nor do they care how much the landfills are filling up with perfectly serviceable items that have one problem that should have been able to be fixed or made sense economically to be fixed.  And too, we have lots of people that have been greenwashed to the point that they think they are saving the environment by throwing away items that may still work because they believe in the hype over energy efficiency.  For example, how many people didn't throw away still usable incandescent light bulbs to replace them with labour and material intensive compact fluorescent bulbs that often didn't last near any of the claims of durability, and then had toxic garbage to throw away to boot, instead of at least waiting until the lightbulb they wished to replace actually burnt out?  The old depression adage of use it up, wear it out, make do or do without was a whole lot more environmentally sensitive than most of the green schemes of today.

Well, I'm  really not at the point where I can comfortably do something radical, or willing to just yet try something on the order like many are now trying by converting a freezer into a refrigerator with a simple thermostat change as there are still a few issues to be worked out on that front, like proper ventilation and some are raising some durability issues that are yet to be seen.  But I am really considering going to a compact refrigerator (which most unfortunately are notorious for energy consumption and very minimally insulated) and a separate chest freezer.  The combination of the two very likely would exceed by some the energy usage of a traditional combination unit, and I would have less refrigerated space (yet how much of what we keep in one isn't just taking up space and eventually is tossed out) but at anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 the price of a combination unit (to replace what I have with a similar model which the low range seems to be around $900), the possible extra cost in electricity may not be an issue, and certainly would not if I then also did move things outdoors when temperatures warranted and shut off the freezer (and here would be a great reuse for the current one, if I made some vents in it, I could put it outdoors and just load it up when it was cold enough outdoors and only bring the frozen stuff back in if the temperatures got too high or at the end of winter when the chest freezer indoors would be restarted again)

Hard to say exactly what I will do, and for the time being the current icebox is limping along with the compressor giving me it's warning clicks of death, sometimes starting right away, other times taking 3 or 4 tries with long pauses in between before finally catching, and those occasions where the only remedy is to turn the unit off for up to 2 hours and then turn it back on.  Being winter I do have some options to make do if and when it goes out completely, but the decision is going to be made soon as to what it is that I'm going to do, and more and more it seems unlikely that I will simply plunk down $900-$1400 just to have this same conundrum in a few or several years again.  (and yes, there would always be the option of a much cheaper top freezer model, that likely my beagle would soon figure out how to open and help himself, but I really do appreciate the convenience of what I access the most to be at reach in height and away from a pesky nose that I'd really consider a smaller unit set on a countertop  before a traditional top freezer combination unit, plus then I'd only be facing the replacement of a single component in the $2-300 range when and if one or the other decided to give up the ghost).  For now at least, it will be weighing out all the pros and cons and seeing if any of it will be moving me towards a plan that has much more durability and overall cost savings.