Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

It has been one heck of a week.  We started out on Sunday.  Since February the lower compartment of the fridge had not acted right.  In February (one month after the one year warranty ran out) it suddenly went too warm and I lost some food.  We thought the coils had froze due to me inadvertently blocking a vent, so my husband defrosted the coils and it seemed to fix it, but we turned it down to the “freezer” setting to keep it at 34 to 38 degrees.  

I am blessed that I really did not trust the fridge compartment after that so tried to keep the items to a minimum in it because Sunday rolled around and I opened the fridge to check it (did that every day after February) to find the fridge at 20 degrees and everything frozen solid.

So I spent the day, when I really wanted to rest and try to get over this cold, processing frozen potatoes and onions.  I turned the onions into frozen diced onions for the freezer.  Got the russets peeled and cut up (sorry knives) while frozen and managed to turn them into mashed potatoes for the freezer.  

The Yukon gold potatoes I diced up, threw them on some baking sheets, coated them in oil and seasoning salt and baked them till crispy to turn into diced hash brown potatoes.  I had some mixed mini potatoes I had bought to make roasted potatoes in the oven.  

Instead I threw some in with the pork roast I had put aside for dinner in the crock pot and the rest I put in with the russet potatoes to boil until tender.  I removed them before mashing the potatoes and put them aside to cool and freeze in big chunks.  These I’m going to try hitting with some oil and putting in the air fryer to crisp up with dinner one night.  Hopefully it works.

Monday rolls around with us thinking we just needed a temp sensor for the bottom compartment of the fridge and we’d hopefully be ok.  Nope.  The fridge went completely belly up and everything just quit.  Thank goodness my mother in law had some spare coolers and bought us some ice to go in them.  Because of her I did not lose all of the food in that fridge.  Luckily the freezer was small in that thing so I was able to get most of everything refrozen before we lost it.

We managed to get the 2400.00 paperweight out onto the deck and we wheeled the old fridge back in to see if my husband could repair it (after I deep cleaned 18 months of gunk out and off of it).  He took off a panel he had researched on the fridge, messed with a flap and put it all back together and it is working fine.  We are keeping an eye on it, though.

Our goal, for now, is to fix the new fridge and sell it for what we can get for it.  I’m kind of done with new fridges at this point.  I cried a lot of tears on Monday with that fridge as 2400.00 is a lot of money to just burn on a lemon like that, especially for us.

The cherry on top of the crap sundae was my husband’s car potentially blew something major, major, on the way home from work on Monday, too and we are trying to figure out if it is worth fixing or not.

It was not a good week.

The frugal stuff I accomplished in a nutshell…

1.  Processed frozen onions and got put back into freezer to stop loss.

2.  Processed 5 lbs russet potatoes into mashed potatoes to avoid loss.

3.  Processed 5 lbs Yukon good potatoes into diced hash browns to avoid loss.

4.  Processed bag of mini potatoes into future roast potatoes and potatoes to cook with a roast to avoid loss.

5.  By checking fridge and freezer was able to keep loss to a minimum.  Total things lost was some salad dressing, my bag of chard that was left from last year’s garden (that was depressing to lose) and some frozen bananas that had defrosted and slimed all over the freezer shelf.  Could have been much worse.

6.  Was able to fix and utilize old fridge without having to throw more money away trying another alternative.

7.  Was able to save the rest of the food by transferring it to another freezer or to some coolers with ice (thanks again, Stacey!).

8.  Husband went online with Whirlpool and at least got some repair manuals for the new fridge out of them.

9.  Am using up perishable food from the fridge that died as quickly as possible because I know what happened will definitely shorten its lifespan.

10. Renewed daughter’s library books over the phone to save us a trip to town in the middle of everything.

11.  A friend of ours had given us a countertop ice maker he didn't need anymore.  My husband insisted on keeping it, even though I didn't see the point at the time to keep it, and it floated around our den for a few years.  When I redid the den, I put it on top of the bar, thinking we might use it downstairs someday if we ever got to a point where we could entertain people again around here.  Well, it sure came in handy when the fridge died as it makes ice a LOT faster than an ice cube tray and when you have an autistic kid that will only drink his preferred beverage with ice...it means a lot to have that handy.  

Glad my husband made me not get rid of it or store it in our storage shed, as trying to find it would have been a nightmare.

12.  Since my husband got his car, the old Equinox has been sitting in our backyard for years.  I refused to let my husband sell it, which now he sees the logic in it now that his car is having major problems.  My daughter and I both loved that car, it was 100% paid for, and I wanted to keep it as it was still a darned good car and could be a good car for our daughter someday (my husband's new car got WAYYYYYY better fuel mileage than the Equinox, which was the entire reason we purchased it).  My husband got a new battery for it this week and fired her up and she's running just fine.  Desperately needs an oil change and a massive detail cleaning on the inside from sitting, but overall...running great.  Glad to see her back in action again, honestly.

And there you go folks.  Our week in a nutshell.   Onto other things.

Enjoy.