Defrosting the freezer

Payless_2

My Mam has gone into respite care and I'm in the process of cleaning her house. She wouldn't let me before. There are 4 inches of ice in the freezer. Stuff is actually embedded in it and so coated in ice you can't see what it is.

Do any of you wise people know what the quickest way of defrosting freezers is? I've heard of sprays that defrost ice quickly but I don't know where to get them and whether they work

Bitsy_Beans

Personally I wouldn't use a spray incase I contaminated the food. I have used a hairdryer and a screwdriver/chisel to hack at the ice as it thaws. Be VERY careful doing this - water + electricity do not mix.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Hairdryer with cable carefully clipped up and away, held at an angle outside the freezer (so no water can drip on it). Keep it in one place for as while (the exact opposite of blowdrying your hair) and move it slowly to the next spot. Use a plastic spatula to ease lumps off - NO KNIVES (trust me on this one - my first fridge when I left home suffered the inevitable when the ex decided to use a carving knife for the job)

Or a steam cleaner. But the hairdryer is more likely to be achievable.

jenster

only thing u can do is turn it off and leave it overnight to defrost

the food in there might not be much good anyway - best to give it a good clean out and start again -- ok not too money saving but will be health saving for ur mum in the long run

Payless_2

Thanks everyone. That was an amazingly fast response. I think I'll try the hairdrier and plastic spatula method (carefully). We chucked a load of stuff out of the freezer a couple of weeks ago and Mam got it all out of the bin and put it back :eek:. So the next time we destroyed it. The food left is frozen ready meals that have been bought recently, except for the food we couldn't get out. Unfortunately my freezer is packed to the brim so I can't put them in there.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Bin it all - if she's prepared to hoik food out of the bin, I'd be suspicious whether she took proper care of the stuff embedded in the ice. You can always replace a few of the items and either hope she doesn't notice or shrug your shoulders and say the electric went off.

Be ruthless - otherwise you'll exhaust yourself trying to deal with every little thing discreetly and she'll only try and put it all back as soon as you look away.

If it isn't there, she can't hang onto it, whatever it is. (as said by someone whose mother will be dug out by the police from her house of cpra when she meets her maker - she couldn't 'kick the bucket' because she hasn't mopped the kitchen floor in about 25 years, so doesn't have one! - assuming anyone notices any difference in the smell

(I was banned from visiting her for daring to offer to clean the place, when told no because I'd only steal something :eek: , like I 'had done for years', I lost my cool and asked her how she would know if anything was lost or stolen with the house in that state)

Be prepared for the sulks afterwards, but well done for doing it!

Payless_2

That's exactly why my Mam won't let me clean her house. She has phoned the police on numerous occasions, once saying I'd stolen her pan lids!! Mam misplaces things and then, as she doesn't accept that she's ill, blames us for taking whatever it is. I've found all-sorts that I'm supposed to have nicked over the years and I've only been at it for a day.

I used 2 bottles of bleach on her loo yesterday and it's still not clean. She must be tough not to come down with something nasty. You could be right about the food and you're definitely right about the likelihood of her being miffed about it but she can't live in that muck. She'll not speak to me for a while but that will give me a break and force my brother to get his finger out

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

It's shocking they aren't ill all the time, isn't it? But then again, when they do get ill, they simply can't imagine how it happened, it must be because a manky stranger from a different land stood near them in the bus queue or it's just the cross they have to bear, when the chest pains aren't the heart, it's just wheeziness from years of dustmites upon dustmites, blah, blah, blah...

Sigh. Like you, my brother is welcome to it.

The dirt in the loo could be stained limescale rather than dirt, so might benefit from descaler (not at the same time as bleach) and I have chipped it off with an old steel for sharpenening knives as that wouldn't scratch the surface.


Check out the flylady thread, as someone there could give you ideas of where to get advice for a major clean, but my instinct is to bin everything that isn't nailed down and put up with the grief.

Good luck!

zippychick

Hi Payless

There is a thread about defrosting freezers, so have a read for other ideas and I will merge this with it later on

Do be careful and good luck
Zip

Woofles

A hand held steamer works on mine that gets done once a year and is usually about three inches thick, and no I have no shame, when I'm dead I'm not going to be saying 'I wish I'd spent more time defrosting the freezer'.

If you want to keep some stuff wrap it well in layers and layers of newspaper it should be okay for a couple of hours, bread is the only one I find defrosts a little.