My 21.5 cf upright garage freezer died yesterday (or more accurately, sometime before.)
We also happen to be on the tail end of an unprecedented heat wave in the Seattle area.
I discovered it about 6:30 am, had to take the day off of work, and went into panic mode between trying to salvage what I could, and locate a new one. Most of the meat was still partially frozen, so I filled my separate garage fridge, and 2 large styro coolers with ice packs from our kitchen fridge/freezer. Still gave the trash man 4 big bags of melted ice cream and other delicacies, as he happened to be picking up at just the right time.
Then surfed the web trying to find a comparable one that would be in stock and close enough that I could pick up right away. Most of the appliance and big box stores just had ones I could order and get in a week or two. Finally found 1, just 1, a wee bit smaller at a Lowe's a couple of towns over. So raced over, and bought it . Sales gal said someone had bought the same one that morning, and I got the last one. But no delivery until next week!
Here's the part where
we-who-do-not-currently-own-pickup-trucks are so blessed to have friends that do. My buddy is a self-employed steel fabricator, and dropped everything to come help me with his Ford F-450 flatbed. This thing is so tall, if feels like climbing Kilimanjaro just getting into the cab or onto the back bed. (He earned a number of beers afterward at a local brewpub.) So we got the new freezer in, and dropped the old one at the same recycling center where I bought it about 20 years ago. It was mostly plastic and foam, I'm sure, and not worth the trouble to convert it into anything but scrap. Besides, at that point, we were already at a very poor position in our relationship.
So today, I am about $1,000 poorer, but my meat is again solidly frozen.