An Old Fridge-Part II

This is the second part of this post about our old fridge

As the time passed the novelty of the fridge waned off, soon from the center of attraction in the house which would be proudly showcased to any quests who visited our home it became on of the utility machines in the house.

But my mother continued to take good care of the fridge. She would not let the maid clean it and would personally clean it from outside daily and once in every 15 days she would take every thing out and clean the fridge spotless. At times when we were all going out for a few days and the house needed to be locked the freezer compartment also became the safe haven for her jewelry. We siblings use to joke with each other that a thief may come to our home and if he is looking for cold water he can simply take the water from outside and will not open the fridge so the jewelry will be safe, fortunately the chance to test this hypothesis never came.

As time passed and we grew up a lot of electronics were added to the house a music player, a couple of CTVs , computer etc. but none of them created the buzz and excitement that our fridge has created when it arrived as a honored guest and joined the family.

After a few years due to job I moved out and lived out of various cities Chandigarh, Kolkota, Mumbai, Bangalore etc. My visits to the home became less frequent as job kept me busier.

One day I was visiting my mother and the electricity bill arrived. I was shocked to see that the bill was more than 2000/- while looking at the usage pattern of my parents there bill should have been less than 1000/- I was wondering why this is the case.

My mother told me not to worry too much about the bill during the short visit eats the chapattis and Okra she has cooked for me. But my mind was working overtime why the bill is so high. I decided to do a power audit for the house and checked the meter. It was indeed moving very fast. I started switching off things one by one. Since it was winters so no fans or AC or coolers were working. So I first switched of the water purifier, asked mother to stop ironing the clothes then started switching off lights from each room one by one. But the meter still appeared to be in a hurry to make another century and continued to beat faster than my heart when I had my first crush.( Mrs Prasad --Please ignore the above line as it is intended to add spice to the blog).

Finally I switched off the fridge and suddenly the meter died with the same. There was absolutely no life left in the meter. I started switching on lights and other appliances one by one but not much activity in the meter. Finally when we switched on the fridge the meter got its youth back and started to sprint again. I had found my culprit and declared the fridge the rouge appliance in the house that was causing stratospheric electricity bills. But my mother will take none of my nonsense and refused to believe that her beloved fridge is responsible for the same.

But the fact was that the old fridge had developed some problem over the years:

• Its compressor was old and inefficient leading to more power consumption.
• The rubber on the door has worn at places leading to escape of cool air which leads to more power consumption
• It was not frost free so a lot of eyes will get deposited so we will have to switch it off and on to get rid of ice. This will further add to the power consumption.
• There was hardly any gap between wall and fridge leading to poor circulation of air again adding to power consumption.

It took the combined wisdom of me, my brother and father to convince my mother to get rid of the fridge and buy a new one. Since these were winter days we got a good deal and further discount by giving the old fridge which technically was in working condition.

The arrival of the new fridge was uneventful without any fanfare, though we did talked how exited when we have bought the first fridge. Note that from brought the conversation has moved to bought for the fridge.

I checked with mother after about a month the amount of electricity bill and it has dropped to 900/-. If you do some quick calculations the fridge was costing us more than cost of a new fridge to operate. With the money saved in the power bill the new fridge paid for itself in less than a year. But my mother still sometime fondly talks about how good the old fridge was and this new fridge has done something to the taste of water.

Thanks for reading do leave a comment. I owe you guys a post on tax saving bonds it should be out in next few days.

An Old Fridge

A fridge is a considered a necessity today but there was a time when it was more of a luxury and novelty than a necessity. One of the first major appliances my parents bought was a 165 liter fridge or refrigerator when we were kids. It was a special moment for the whole family as we were upgrading from the water cooled in “Matka” to water cooled by the magic machine as we used to call it back then. The arrival of the fridge was a special event in our family.

Nowadays most people like to keep there fridge in the kitchen but I am talking about the days when fridge was a status symbol (at least for our family) so a prominent corner in the drawing room was vacated for the esteemed machine.

Once the fridge arrived and was unpacked we marveled at its snow white complexion and wondered how we will keep it clean. Our mother gave us an elaborate lecture on why we should not be touching it and how costly it is and what fate we had in store if we touched it with dirty hands.

A sudden debate started between my mother and grandmother on how to do the puja of the fridge. My grandmother wanted to place the OM and Swastika marks on the fridge but my mother was reluctant to put anything on the fridge as it will soil the fridge. Finally a compromise was reached and grandmother made a Swastika and OM on water bottle and it was placed in fridge to be cooled. With this the tempers as well as the water started to cool down in the house.

Our fridge was a hit with all my friends in the neighborhood even with those who had a fridge before us. The reason being our fridge had a small tap kind of thing outside so you could get cold water without opening the fridge. This was a major innovation in those days though such fridge due to some reason never took off.

This fridge served our family for many years but finally became old and again was responsible for temperatures soaring in our family along with electricity bills.

I will be writing about the same in the next blog, while I am continuing to do my research on the tax saving bonds. Some of my friends have emailed me to check which tax saving bond they should buy L&T or IIFCL

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