How I saved my fridge

That world wide web, it is something special. I bet you didn't know that it's capable of saving your fridge? Really. Seriously. Read on.

The last two days, hubbie and I have noticed an odd smell emanating from the fridge. At first, I thought my nose was hypersensitive because of a sinus infection. Then hubbie noticed the ice from our ice dispenser tasted of this smell. (After a lengthy discussion about the smell during dinner last night, Brendan claimed that his treasured blankies also had this "smell.") Hubbie likened the smell to burning birthday candles. It reminded me more of flat-out burning plastic without the sweetness of birthdays.

So I turned to my world wide web, google.com, in fact. What could my fellow web users tell me about burning plastic in a fridge? The first finding: Some woman explained how her fridge almost caught on fire because of an overheated engine of some sort. Possible. The second finding: I almost neglected to read this one, because she described a Kenmore fridge, while we have a Maytag. But I continued. The writer explained that she noticed the smell of burning plastic, and found glow sticks had fallen in her freezer's defrost heater vent. They had melted into the heater. Hmmm ...

Turns out, as every good American should, we have glow sticks in our freezer! (Don't you know -- that makes them reuseable?) Several of them. Leftovers from our neighborhood party in September. I made hubbie read the two possible issues I had uncovered, and he promptly went to the freezer to discover one red glow stick stuck in our defrost heater vent. We pulled it out before it caused much damage, other than a lovely smell that will take a couple of weeks to eliminate. (The posting also mentioned putting an open can of coffee in the freezer to help with the smell.)

I can't thank that wonderful woman who posted her fridge problem online enough, and I especially love the geniuses at google for making information so darn accessible. My friend, the world wide web.