Recently, I had an issue with my 16-year-old refrigerator/freezer in that it stopped making ice cubes. OK, it’s near the end of its life cycle and it could be time to buy a new one.
Well, we love our ice cube maker and like ice for our water and other beverages. With our hot summer days soon approaching, this issue needs to be quickly resolved.
I purchased a couple of plastic ice cube trays online to make some ice while we figured out this problem. In fact, I ordered two plastic ice cube trays but only received one.
Ice Cube Dilemma
However, we thought we would check online to see if there are any hints about how to fix this issue. So, let’s see, we tried pulling out the water filter, running a little water over it and pushing it back in to place; that didn’t work. We then purchased a new water filter and tossed the old one out; that, also, didn’t work. We tried pulling out the ice cube bin, washing it out, and then re-inserting it; sorry, that didn’t help. Then we slightly adjusted the freezer’s section to make it less cold. We hoped that since it was slightly warmer it would melt any frozen issues. We still were able to get cold water, so we thought this would help. Unfortunately, this did not work.
Our next step would be to call a repair person. However, we were told the cost of the service call and parts would probably outprice things, and it might be better to get a new refrigerator.
Sadly, I met with a friend for coffee who suggested an easy fix is to defrost the refrigerator. She has to defrost her fridge twice a year. I’ve never defrosted this refrigerator as it is a defrostless unit. OK, we turned the unit off and defrosted it. It was a little work to take everything out and clean the shelves and bins. We left it turned off for about four hours. That was enough time to allow things to defrost.
Sure enough, that did the trick and we now get big ice cubes once again.
Faux Ice Cubes
Ironically, I decided to end today’s blog with a photograph of faux ice cubes. They are made of solid glass and look totally real. I found these over the weekend and I’m totally excited about them. Most of the faux ice cubes I’ve seen are made of plastic and look rather fake.
At our historic farmhouse, we can now “make” ice cream for the summer. During the 1930’s ice cream was very popular. Farmhouses were used to having ice. The ice man would bring people a huge chunk of ice for the ice boxes. People could use an ice pick to chip off smaller pieces of ice as needed.
Then, In the 1930-1940’s people began switching out their ice boxes for electric refrigerators. Ice cooled beverages became popular. Everyone wanted ice of suitable size for their glasses; thus, ice cube trays were invented.
As far as the historic display goes, the glass ice cubes are too heavy to place into vintage glasses but “making ice cream” is possible. Or we could put them in a small non-vintage dish with ice tongs. We could pretend we are placing the faux ice cubes in the glasses.
Ending Notes on Ice Cube Blog
Wow, I bet you didn’t think ice cubes were that important right? Anyway, we’re glad we are back to getting ice cubes.
I’ll also keep my Readers posted if the ice cream display in the historic farmhouse is developed. We haven’t done an ice cream display before, so I’m looking forward to talking about ice cream on tours.
Enjoy your day and have an ice-cold water, soda or lemonade to cool off. Don’t forget the ice cubes!
Resource Sites – Frigidaire Household Sales Textbook, 1928.