Hey, I thought of three more things that are “good” about winter!
It’s really easy to defrost the freezer in the winter. You can just dump all the food outside in a big Rubbermaid bin, defrost, then return the food. No having to eat freezer-burned leftovers every day for a month, just to clear it out!
Another plus is that when I throw the kitchen garbage out into the garage, it freezes. No bad garbage smells, no attracting animals; when it’s garbage day, it’s freezing and snowy but at least it’s not smelly and goopy.
And lastly, it never rains. Not that I mind the rain in principle, but the rain is really tough to stand in when you’re waiting for the school bus. Snow falls softly and brushes off and is even kind of fun; rain is just miserable and wet. I have to confine Little Miss Sunshine to her clear-plastic-encased stroller and she hates that and whines the whole time. So while I’m really, really looking forward to spring, I’m not so much looking forward to waiting for the school bus in the rain.
January 22th and it’s like, negative a hundred outside AGAIN. Winter, I can only defrost my freezer SO MANY TIMES before I throw in the towel…this is your first warning!
TurtleHead 
Aren’t you a little Pollyanna? It’s pretty mild today though and this close to rain
I totally do that, defrost my freezer, every winter. It is the only time I do it. Cause I am lazy like that. And the inch thick frost on the side of my freezer walls has been screaming out to me for weeks. 🙂
Ha! Hubby defrosted our freezer yesterday afternoon. It’s apparently the Thing To Do. Too funny…
BTW, I’m STILL cracking up about the Beatles post from a few days ago. I hope everyone’s recovered from the shock of their break-up by now.
I have actually booked a day off work next Friday to do this chore. Once a year feels like enough to me.
Defrosting freezers is absolutely no fun…but what else are you going to do on a frigid winter day?
Okay, all you people who are going to or who have defrosted this week…I admit I have never actually defrosted my freezer. It’s only a year old and so I’ve been able to avoid it until now.
I’m planning on doing it this weekend and I have the concepts down of a) removing the food and b) leaving the door open while it is unplugged.
But…what happens to all the melted ice? Is it going to puddle all over my basement floor? Should I surround the freezer first with all the towels in the house?
Just wondering.
This is really stretching it, but I admire your attempt. Personally? I’m just giving up and going south for a few days. Oh, and it was only -4 here today, and it felt REALLY warm. Scary that. 🙂
I’m over it. Though, I’m over it in October. I’m a summer chick FOR SURE.
Is your freezer upright? Or chest?
Mine is an upright. Apparently some of them come with a drain plug. Mine doesn’t that I can find.
And, sadly, mine sits on hardwood floor…which I managed to water damage the last time I defrosted.
The water will puddle big time. I had towels on the floor I tried to change often to keep the floor “dry”. I also had oodles of towels I rotated through the bottom inside of the freezer which soaked up most of the water.
I will admit that I’d had my freezer for about 5 years before I defrosted it the first time and it was an upright so it had accumulated a LOT of ice.
The instructions everywhere say do NOT chip at the ice with tools…you might damage the cooling lines. I will admit to a certain amount of prying with my fingers. They also say not to use a hair drier…I’m not sure why. After 8 hours of room temp melting I got frustrated and used a drier. It was actually quite satisfying (in that picking a scab off kind of way) to get huge chunks of ice that way.
That’s it. It takes no skill…just patience and vigilence with the towels if you don’t want a puddle on your floor.
My mom unplugs her freezer and immediately fires up the blow dryer and uses a spatula as an ice chipper. The blow dryer loosens everything quite quickly. She takes out the chunks, wipes up the inside with a towel and she’s done – takes about 30 minutes.
She used to unplug it and let it defrost on its own for several hours but it took too long and created too much pudlling so now she takes the shortcut.
Thanks for all the freezer suggestions! I wound up doing a combination of all these ideas. First I unplugged the freezer and put all the food outside in coolers. Then I put one bath-sized towel on each shelf and just left it to thaw. After a couple of hours I swapped out most of the towels for dry ones (I accumulated wet towels in our little plastic wading pool, an idea I will definitely use again!). A couple of hours later about 2/3 of the ice was gone, and I was getting impatient, so I busted out the hair dryer. Five minutes of drying and picking away at the ice chunks with my hands, and it was all done! The towels stopped any drips from getting on the floor — we didn’t have any water spillage at all. After it was all done I just threw all the towels in the washing machine, then reloaded the freezer. Whoo hoo!