An Old Nerd Deals With Things Not Getting Cold Enough

Shiny... too shiny.

Nothing screams Oldnerd like shopping for appliances. And nothing is more annoying than appliance shopping under duress. Especially for a fridge.


You’re probably a nerd or have some nerdly tendencies. Which means you know the feeling when The Thing You Like in any kind of tech has fallen out of favor, and so your options are limited. I’m in that space now with Bluetooth headphones and home audio setups, and that’s bad enough, but I learned I’m there too with fridges.

Midsizes fridges are tough to find. I have some very specific size requirements, width and depth wise, due to the layout of the kitchen. And in that size range, most of the models on the market are smaller, shittier top-freezer models. Everything is french door bottom freezers that are too big for my space, or side by sides, which are garbage for serious food storage. And stainless steel. So much stainless steel.

Oh, you could get the fridge I eventually ended up with in other finishes. All you had to do was have a spare two fucking months to wait for it. I’m not a stainless steel fan when it comes to appliances. I don’t have any other stainless steel appliances. But if you need it in a week, you get stainless steel, because you have no other choice.

That said, I’m fairly happy with it. A Whirlpool 22 cubic foot model. It’s a little wider than the old fridge (the absolute widest I can manage in the space), and a little taller, and in the fridge that leads to not just more space, but less wasted space. Something about the positioning of the shelves just works better and it feels like I can fit 25% more stuff in there.

The freezer’s a disappointment. Between the basket configuration and the ice maker I didn’t want and can’t use, there’s a lot of wasted space. Luckily, I rock a chest freezer, but even so, the ability to stack and store and organize stuff in there feels way worse.

But it keeps shit cold and keeps shit frozen, so it’ll do the trick.