Stay Cool This Summer

August 8, 2017

This invention, which was patented on August 8, 1899, ranks right up there with my two most favorite inventions: electricity and flushing toilets.

Refrigeration revolutionized how our food is processed and stored. Without this invention – which includes the freezer- women would still be spending up to 8 hours a day in the preparation and storage of food. But refrigeration has freed up hours and hours of woman hours that can now be devoted to other pursuits.

The infallible Wikipedia provides a lot of history about the refrigerator: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator.

Personally, I love the refrigerator because it makes it harder for those two miscreants, Sam and Ella, to hang out at my house and wreak havoc. But also because I can put things in the fridge and they’ll stay there for months and months before my hubby cleans out the really old stuff to make room for wonderful fresh food! It’s magical really. Kind of like the magic table in this clip:

No matter how many times I view this video it makes me laugh. That poor guy probably never knew what happened.

Growing up, our family had the very latest in a refrigerator. Yes, the always popular avocado green model. I’m not really sure why people loved that color, but it was a thing in the 1970’s. We also had the avocado green range. I can’t recall on the dishwasher. I do know my Mom’s first dishwasher was a portable white one which was rolled over to the sink and attached via hoses to the faucet. Seems like when that one failed the new one was avocado green.

When the hubby and I bought our fixer upper house in 1981, there was not a dishwasher. So we did what any young couple with a house but zero money for anything else did: we went to the Sears scratch and dent store. It was located in the building which is now Starbucks headquarters on First Avenue South in Seattle.

And just like my mom’s kitchen a portable dishwasher was needed. We had to buy a skinny minny sort of model so it could fit in the small space available. And it was avocado green with a butcher block top. Double duty! Not only did it wash dishes but it served as a cutting board. It looked something like the one pictured here, but much, much smaller. We were livin’ the dream!

This fridge looks a lot like the one in my parents home… as do the cupboards.