New fridge-freezer

Remember how I have this aversion to cleaning and somehow got talked into showing the unsavoury state of our fridge? Normal people probably would have got out the Mr Muscle – or the vinegar and baking soda – and given the whole thing a really good clean. Not me. I bought a whole new fridge-freezer instead*.

We have bought a couple of major appliances from Appliances Online before – our dishwasher and washing machine – and have always been very happy with their choice, value and service, so we went looking there again this time (well, actually, Chris looked at Argos and Curry’s and a few other places first, before I reminded him that Appliances Online is the place to go).

Downsizing

I spent a bit of time drooling over the rather lovely looking Hotpoint Quadro, but then we talked about it and came to the realisation that we actually didn’t need an all-singing, all-dancing, stupidly huge fridge-freezer (the old one was an American-style fridge-freezer with an ice maker and chilled water – neither of which had worked for a fair while – and huge amounts of space), because we really didn’t make use of most of the features. When we first bought it, we used to fill it up (with hideously extravagant ready meals and exotic fruit and veg from Waitrose) and then end up throwing lots of food away because it would go off before we’d managed to finish it. These days, we buy most of our food daily or every other day and really the only times the fridge would get full use were Christmas and parties. And, honestly, it’s a bit ridiculous to buy a huge fridge (and spend a couple of hundred more pounds on doing so) for one or two occasions each year. My sister lives round the corner and we can invade her fridge at Christmas if necessary. And keep stuff in the basement or outside because it’s usually cold at Christmas, anyway. We also thought it might be nice to be able to open the fridge without having to perform crazy contortions – our kitchen is teeny and definitely not the sort of room suited to a huge American fridge. So, we settled for the plainer, but functional and efficient Indesit BAAN12S. It’s a downsize, but it’s actually much more suited to our current lifestyle.

The new fridge-freezer

Look – no yucky stain! (Yet.) the last photo is of the girls’ favourite freezer drawer. Talking of the freezer drawers, I actually find it much easier to fit things in and access things in this freezer than the old one, which was very narrow. Oh, yes, and it does make ice. Kind of. See those bumpy bits in the freezer? You put water in them and they make ice cubes – you just bang the holder on the side and the ice comes out. I think it’s quite funky, but obviously it’s not quite the same as an automatic ice-maker that’s plumbed into your water supply. We had no problem fitting everything from our fortnightly Sainsbury’s shop in the fridge and freezer and still had room to keep three bowls of leftover salad that evening.

Cheeky request

Anyway, as I said, we were going to use Appliances Online anyway, because we’d had good service from them before and they have a really wide choice of appliances and then I remembered that I was following Appliances Online on Twitter and so I sent a very cheeky tweet asking if they fancied giving a parenting blogger with a PR of 3 a discount. And, lo and behold the lovely David Ingram said yes and gave us a nice refund. Which is great, because it’s kind of like free money. We were going to buy it anyway (actually we had bought it already) and I was probably going to write this post, too (I couldn’t resist the opportunity to show my way of getting a clean fridge).

Delivery service and special mention to Terry

The delivery service is very good. While you’re just given a day of delivery when you order, you get an automated call and text message the night before letting you know the four-hour period when the delivery will occur and then we also got a personal call from the driver giving even more detail about when they’d be there. We had booked and paid for them to take away our old machine but, unfortunately, our old machine was a lot bigger than the new one, so they didn’t actually have room on the van. But the driver booked it in to be collected the next day. There was a bit of a mix-up then, as it had been booked in as a washing machine to be collected somehow and, again, they didn’t have room on the van. But the driver, Terry, arranged for it to be collected the next day. And, then, he went above and beyond the call of duty and checked the next morning whether it had been booked in as an American fridge and when he saw that it hadn’t been booked in correctly again, he arranged to take out a different van and come and pick it up himself to make sure it got collected. Of course, I can’t promise you’ll get Terry (and, if you’re recycling something that’s not like-for-like you should be sure to double-check that will be OK), but all the delivery drivers we’ve had from Appliances Online have been very helpful and friendly.

So, if you’re looking for a new fridge-freezer, I’d definitely recommend looking at Appliances Online.

* Yes, OK. That’s a lie. The old one broke and I’m (fairly) certain it had nothing to do with the yucky stain at the bottom. Fairly certain. We spent over a week without a fridge. Just when the weather got hot. We had milk bottles sitting in the little sink and we bought a teeny little fridge, designed to fit six cans of coke. It was not fun.