The downstairs fridge started making a helluva racket a couple three weeks ago, and it only cost me $90 for a service tech to come out and confirm my suspicions: the compressor was shot, and replacing it would cost nearly as much as replacing the refrigerator.
This fridge and the two that preceded it were all either refurbished or hand-me-down jobs, the first coming alongside a stove given to us by a friend of a friend. Three fridges in 12 years seems like an excessive rate of turnover to me, so I thought perhaps it was time to explore getting a new one instead.
Luckily, the day I started looking was the last day of a big sale at venerable furniture and appliance retailer The Brick, and soon enough I had arranged for a shiny new fridge to be delivered in a week's time. Best of all, they would take the old fridge out and see to its disposal as well.
In the interim I set out trying to recover as many of the stickers from the fridge as I could. One of my friends noted that it hadn't been that long since I had undertaken a similar exercise, and suggested that perhaps I would be better off switching to magnets or perhaps mounting some of my favourite decals on a magnetized backing instead.
This is an impeccably reasonable suggestion to make, and yet, I continue to resist it. I thought at first it might be laziness, but on the other hand, I was already willing to spend 1-2 hours peeling stickers off a refrigerator with a razor blade and lightly affixing them to sheets of wax paper.
No, the truth of it is that if I were to magnetize them, then they would stop being stickers.
You attach a sticker to something knowing it to be a temporary sort of permanence for the most part. Eventually the sticker will fade or wear away or get torn, or the item attached to it will break down or become obsolete in some fashion.
Why fight this transitory nature by painstakingly removing stickers with little to no sentimental value and then reattaching them to a brand new fridge? For no better reason than the fact that you can, really.
And in this case I managed to salvage a high percentage of stickers from the old fridge, probably aided by the pebbly finish. Conversely, the smooth sides of the new fridge helped them to adhere firmly without any additional adhesive.
I also managed to executed a smidgen of planning for the layout this time around, putting smaller stickers (and many magnets, to be fair) or those requiring reading closer to eye-level, and putting larger, more iconic ones on the lower door instead.
I'm not sure what these stickers might suggest about me to a third party, but if they came away thinking it is someone nerdy with a strong interest in breweries and pop culture, in addition to period aviation and space exploration, and who is strongly driven by whimsy, well, I suppose they wouldn't be too far off, would they?
Now I just hope that I am able to have friends over to pull a beer or soda from the new fridge while all the stickers are still intact!
For comparison's sake, here is the old fridge:
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