Alright, so I’ve been a little lax when it comes to keeping some of my home appliances clean and functioning properly. One such appliance is a mini-fridge, which has built up a layer of ice on the inside top of the fridge. This solid chunk of ice is now interfering with closing the fridge door properly.
So how do I go about defrosting my fridge? Would it be perfectly safe (for my fridge) if I put it in the bath tub and let the ice melt?
Good idea. Also, place a bowl of hot water in the fridge to speed up the unfreezing. Or use a hair dyer (from a distance of around 18 inches).
Don’t use a hammer/chisel combination on the ice. Trust me on this. :smack:
Also, when I defrost my little fridge, I just fold a towel up and put it in the bottom of the food compartment. It catches the water and bits of ice pretty effectively. Then I wring it out and put the fridge back to work.
Like wolfstu said, when I had a .9 cubic foot fridge at my old job and the time came to defrost, I’d just empty it, put two rolls of paper towels on the bottom, close the door, pull the plug and go home for the weekend.
Monday morning: Clean fridge!
I used to have to defrost a large upright freezer in a big unfinished basement.
My method, empty freezer into a few coolers, connect garden hose to drain of hot water heater, blast away, then dry innards of freezer w/ towels, return food to freezer. Very quick method.
PS: Spread water on cement floor to add healthful humidity to indoor climate.
To defrost a small freezer, carry into yard, prop open door, use garden hose and blast with cold water from garden hose.
It is 6 degrees farenheit here. That should work real well.
For a minfridge, there are three no-labor options.
Put minfridge in bathtub or shower. Open door, leave overnight.
Put minifridge in bathtub or shower. Put in large bowl or pan of very hot water. Close door, wait a couple of hours.
Schedule time to thoroughly clean kitchn. Put minifridge on kitchen floor. Open door, leave overnight. Mop kitchen floor the next morning.
With my minifridge, I’ve always unplugged and put it facedown in the tub, so the water doesn’t accumulate in the bottom (there are some grooves there).
When I worked retail, we used to deice the freezer section of our very old fridge by smacking at the ice repeated with metal shelf supports. This also had the advantage of producing a lot of little tiny chunks of ice, which could be made into snowballs and thrown at unsuspecting coworkers - because who expects to get hit by a snowball at work in the middle of July?
Having moving water helps a lot, regardless of the temperature. There’s some good thermodynamics reason for this.
But if a hose is not practical, you can get something like a plant sprayer and start squirting water on the ice. Try to find a spot that looks like you can get a crack formed in the ice.
A pan full of hot water helps a lot too. The steam coming off the hot water really works well.
I’ve never owned a refrigerator that is frost-free so I’ve had a lot of experience.
I used towels and bowls of hot water to defrost a mini-fridge that had become very frosted. I replaced the hot water occasionally (every hour or two) so that it would always be at least warm, and I had to wring out the towels a few times. It certainly helps if the water in the pan or bowl is kept hot, though I imagine that cold water would help to an extent too. It will also help if you use a metal pan and keep the door open to let the heat and water vapor escape. Check the ice now and then to see if there’s any you can remove by hand – once it started to loosen, I was able to get a lot of the ice out that way.
Here’s how I defrost our upright freezer: after turning it off and putting the food in picnic coolers, I get our 20" fan and face it into the freezer. The blast of air thaws the ice very quickly. To speed things along, I use a plastic spatula to pry off the ice once it’s loose enough and toss it so it isn’t keeping the freezer cool. A pan on the bottom shelf catches any drip water. This method gets our upright completely defrosted and bone dry in about two hours.
I always just unplugged mine, tilted it back against the wall, propped the door open a little and let it thaw. When it was defrosted, I just bailed the water out with something and dumped in the sink. Then I cleaned it with paper towels. I thought it was easier than other methods because I don’t have to move the thing twice.
If you have got one of steam cleaners with all the various attachments you could use that. We used this on our deep-freeze in the garage. It soon cleared the ice. Although from the outside , with all that steam , it did look alarming to anyone passing by.
We use a hair dryer to defrost our deep-freeze and a flat plastic egg turner to speed getting the ice off the walls. No problem, the refrigerant tubes are behind the wall. Only takes a few minutes. The ice falls off in large pieces to the bottom that can easly be placed in a container.