A Smile of Victory

I love challenges, especially when most people would say, "nah...you can't do that". Luckily my husband is the same way, so we often get ourselves into some situations. Today, happened to be one of those days.

Like I said before, we are getting our house ready to go on the market...well, we are pretty sure at least. So today's task was to get rid of the nasty, old, broken fridge that the family before us left in the house. We didn't know the fridge was broken when we bought the house, but since it was so old, we decided to buy a new one and move the old one to the basement so we could use it to store extra food, especially for parties (which I love hosting!). In fact, moving the fridge was one of the very first things we did when we took possession of our house, so our new fridge could be delivered. We called one of my brother-in-laws and with my husband they maneuvered it down into the basement.

Now, here is the part that needs a little explaining. First of all, we don't really have a "real basement"...actually it is a REAL basement in the fact that it is very unfinished with low ceilings and this scary bomb shelter door that  leads outside. Yes, there are stairs that you can go down to reach it from inside the house, but they are so steep and the stairwell is so narrow, a railing was the second thing we did when we moved in here. Needless to say the fridge did not fit down the inside stairs, so the boys had to lug it through the breakfast room, outside, and down the bomb shelter. Unfortunately, the basement was too low to stand it up, so they had to carry it all the way across the nasty, scary basement to the stairwell, and turn it up there. They were able to get it about three inches past the staircase base and that is where our fridge has stood, where we realized it was in fact broken, for the past four plus years.

The other day, however, someone told me about this program BG&E does in their attempt to be more environmentally friendly, where they will come and remove old fridges and freezers (as long as they are in working condition) and pay you $50.00. Sounded like a challenge to me!

The fridge sounds like it is running when it is plugged in, so this morning, before A even woke up, my husband was up at Giant buying  4 bags of ice. Why you ask? Well, we had to make the darn thing cool enough so they would actually believe it was working and haul it away! When 4 bags were not doing the trick, my husband again make the trip to the grocery store and bought 4 more. The fridge cooled significantly better with 8 large bags of ice, so now we just had to get them out of there before BG&E showed up in three hours.

My husband headed off to work this morning with strict directions on what to do when BG&E arrived.

When I answered the door I had to tell them to hold on (outside of course) while I "restrained the dog". Then I had to run to the basement, throw 4 bags of ice in the cooler, and hide the other 4 bags in the washing machine. Apparently the max capacity the cooler could take was 4 of these giant bags. Then I had to dry the shelves quickly with the towel that was down there, without letting the fridge door open too long so the cold could escape. Then I had to run upstairs...actually put the dog away, and let them in. You know this was my husband's plan because not once was our child mentioned in here...I guess she was sitting patiently in the family room waiting for me...right :)

Don't worry, I had already tweaked the plan to include putting A in her booster with some crack...aka yogurt raisins, and messing up my hair so it looked like we had a very ferocious yellow lab, and they should not even bother checking the fridge to see if it worked, they should just grab it and go and be very thankful they made it out alive. I even contemplated listening in as they were removing it and if anything like, "this doesn't work" came out of their mouths I was going to release the dog! Very cleaver, huh!

Well, as I am writing this, I am staring at a large pile of ice on our grass and thinking about the nice bare spot that is now 3 inches from the bottom of the staircase.

Challenge won!

xoxo

Daily Mom