Image via Apartment Therapy

This past weekend we had a long list of home maintenance and repairs to be done; work in the yard, replace the furnace filter, fix my broken pantry door hinge…. and (cross our fingers…) try to rescue our feverish refrigerator.

First off, my husband tackled the broken door hinge.  Even though our home was only built 8 years ago, the pantry door hinge which gets A LOT of use, ripped right out of the door frame.  I tried to use a screw driver to replace the hinge, but the screws just spun around.  The holes for the screws were stripped out and too large.

Luckily my husband knew just what to do.  Here’s how he fixed it:He started with wood glue and matches.  You can also use white glue in a pinch.   Saturday he used Gorilla Glue because that’s the only wood glue we had in the house.

He dipped the match into the glue to coat it well.

Then he stuck the match into hole.

Once the end of the match was pushed as far as it could go into the hole, he bent the match sideways to snap it off inside the hole even with the door.

Then he replaced the hinge.  We left the door open and untouched for 24 hours to let the glue dry.

It worked like a charm!  Don’t you just love easy and inexpensive repairs.

Image via Apartment Therapy

Next came the trouble with the refrigerator.

The last thing I want to spend money on right now is a new refrigerator.  So last week, when it started acting up, I was worried and a little mad.  Our refrigerator is only 8 years old after all. Our refrigerator is a GE profile (not the cool frig above) but was bought because of it’s great rating from Consumer Reports.

About a week ago, we noticed our freezer temperature was way too warm.  Despite trying to lower it, it just wasn’t freezing properly.  Then I happened to feel the side of the freezer and was alarmed by how hot it was.  Our refrigerator seemed to be running a “fever”.

After reading online my husband decided to try cleaning the refrigerator before we called in the repair man.

I’ve pulled it out and vacuumed behind our refrigerator before, so I thought my husband was crazy… cleaning the coils couldn’t be enough to fix it. But, he took a drill and removed the lower metal back panel of the refrigerator.  I was shocked at how dusty it was in there… and hot.

Using our shop vacuum, he vacuumed everywhere he could reach, but he still wasn’t satisfied.  So he used the blower on the shop vacuum.  It blew dust from here to kingdom come… but it also cleaned out the dust from the refrigerator amazingly well.

Once done, we sat back and waited.  After a few hours our freezer was much colder… and the “fever” was gone.

So I guess the moral is, cleanliness is next to healthiness.  Take my advice and next time you deep clean your kitchen, remove that panel and dust the inside of your refrigerator… it will extend the life of your refrigerator.

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