Sally Breslin: My Life: REMEMBER WHEN REFRIGERATOR FREEZERS HAD TO MANUALLY BE DEFROSTED?

I was browsing through some of my old newspaper columns a few days ago and came across this one I originally wrote over 25 years ago about the dreaded chore of defrosting the freezer. It brought back a lot of not-so-pleasant memories that made me laugh. I thought I'd reprint it here for those of you who are old enough to relate!

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The other night I tackled a chore I hate with such a passion, I can force myself to do it only once every two years: I defrosted my freezer.

I've heard that most refrigerators nowadays come with self-defrosting freezers, but you can’t prove it by me. I mean, a freezer that’s actually capable of melting its own frost while still keeping frozen foods frozen? Sounds like something straight out of a Stephen King novel to me (probably because my refrigerator is so old, it was delivered by horse and buggy).

By the time I get around to defrosting my freezer, it has built up such a thick layer of ice inside, I honestly expect to see the bow of the Titanic poking out of it. I also usually wait until so many stalactites have formed, I can’t wedge anything else in there without the risk of impaling a major artery.

Defrosting my freezer is no small job. In fact, when you do it as infrequently as I do, it can turn into an all-day affair. To begin with, there is the time-consuming process of deciding which frozen foods should be kept and which should be given their last rites.

Unfortunately, my husband is no help.

“What’s that big black lump you’re holding?” he asked me the last time I cleaned out the freezer on defrosting day. “It looks like a meteorite.”

“It used to be a roast,” I answered, frowning, “…before it died a slow and agonizingly painful death from freezer burn.”

“You’re not just going to toss it out, are you?” He gave me his much-too-frequent “are you wasting my hard-earned money again?” look. “Why don’t you at least cook it up for the dogs? I'm sure they’ll eat it.”

The man should be reported to the SPCA.

I used to take everything out of the freezer and put it into Styrofoam coolers, then turn off the refrigerator and patiently wait for the ice inside to melt. Two days later, the food in the coolers would be breeding deadly botulism toxin, and I’d still be waiting. But a few years ago, my mother took pity on me and gave me a gadget called an electric defroster. It looked like a small hot-plate on legs, with a power cord attached. The directions said to set it inside the freezer, close the door and then plug it in and wait.

Although it sounded like the answer to my prayers, I was a little apprehensive about putting an electrical device into a place that soon would cause water to drip directly onto it. Still, I was willing to try anything that would speed up the chore from Hades, even if it meant electrocuting myself and having to sport a Bride of Frankenstein hairstyle for a while.

The gadget ended up cutting down my defrosting time to a mere six hours.

My husband always reasoned that I should defrost the freezer in the middle of the winter, so I could bury the contents of the freezer out in the snow to keep it frozen. I, however, always figured it was better to do the defrosting on the hottest day of the summer so I could keep cool.

That’s why I chose last week for the dreaded task. It was a real scorcher of a day, so the thought of tackling my freezer actually appealed to me. Besides that, I'd just read about a “simple” technique for defrosting freezers and I was eager to try it…especially since it didn’t involve handling any electrical devices covered with water.

The article suggested I soak a towel in hot water, then lay it over the ice. It said as the ice melted, the towel would absorb the water and then easily could be wrung out, eliminating all of the messy dripping and draining in the freezer.

Sounded good to me. So I took a bath towel and soaked it in hot water in the kitchen sink, then applied it to the ice in my freezer. Right away, the ice began to melt…and instantly cooled off the hot towel. Back to the sink for more hot water, then back to the freezer to melt more ice. About 2,245 trips to the sink later, I finally began to see the bare walls of my freezer peeking through.

I soon learned that repeatedly thrusting your hands into steaming hot water and then shoving them into a freezer did something strange to your fingers. Aside from making them steam, it made them feel all numb and tingly, as if they were asleep. It also made them incapable of grasping anything. I dropped the sopping-wet towel on the floor so many times, I think I warped the wood.

Alas, all of the torture was worth it because I now have a nice roomy freezer that contains neatly stacked food… most of which I actually can identify.

But two summers from now, or whenever I get the rare urge to defrost the freezer again, I am going to use an even easier (and much quicker) method than the hot towel: a blowtorch and a chisel.

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Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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