I did not know this!!!
Last night I was cleaning out the fridge of old leftovers so I could put my freshly-made ravioli lasagna in. Having a side-by-side, I really have to organize everything in there as best as I can or else nothing would fit.
I hate side-by-sides.
I ended up with a completely empty shelf in the fridge (it's nearly time for a commissary run) as I cleaned it out, so I figured I might as well try to wash off the shelves. This is something that has not been done for... well... it's actually never been done since I moved into this house, unless Kurt did it, which I doubt.
I've tried to wipe the fridge down, but where the fridge is located in the kitchen, you can't open the fridge door fully. The shelves on the door make it very difficult to squeeze your body into the fridge to look for things, especially if you're not an extremely petite person to begin with. In fact, both Kurt and I have inadvertently knocked the door shelves off by brushing them with our bodies more times than I can count, resulting in many broken bottles and hot sauce all over the kitchen floor.
I just gave up after a while because I couldn't wedge my body in between the fridge door and the fridge itself in order to do any sort of cleaning.
Last night I figured I ought to try one more time. As I wiped the shelf down with some Costco cleaning wipes, I saw there were spots on the underneath of the shelf as well. I scrubbed at those spots, but as I did so, I realized the shelf was lifting up. I kept pushing, and all of a sudden, the shelf released itself from the back of the fridge where it was hanging, and voila!! A removable shelf!!!
I was stunned.
I told Kurt this on the phone last night, and he told me it's common knowledge that fridge shelves come out. Hmph.
So last night I took all the shelves out of the fridge, one by one, and washed them with hot soap and water. The glass on the shelves is now crystal clear!! It looks weird because I was so used to them being dirty.
I also tried washing out the vegetable bin, but since I can't remove it (again resulting from the door not opening fully) it was a humongous pain in the rear to do, and every moment I expected the shelves on the door to come cascading down. Fortunately they never did, but by the time I got the vegetable bin relatively clean, I had no more energy to tackle the meat bin. So that will have to wait.
Why doesn't the fridge door open all the way? The folks who lived in the house before us completely remodeled the house. This is why we have a relatively new black side-by-side refrigerator in the kitchen, and the original avocado green fridge in the garage. If truth be told, I'd rather have the avocado green fridge in the house, even with its nasty green color.
The fridge is in a small nook between one countertop and the door to the garage. Actually, it is wedged into that nook. When Kurt has moved it a few times, he's scraped the wall a bit because it's in the nook so very tightly. Not only that, if he does want to move the fridge, he has to take the garage door off its hinges and remove the molding around the door. The fridge door opens right into the wall where the garage door is located, so there is no room for it to open fully. The door can't even stand at a full 90� angle to the fridge itself; it's more like 80�, if that. To be able to remove the bins and even the shelves easily, the door would have to open up fully, so that it's parallel with the fridge.
When I was growing up, my stepmom would clean out the fridge every so often by using a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. This is why I never figured out that fridge shelves come out! I thought that you had to get a bucket and sponge to clean out the fridge!
But now I have a sparkling clean fridge, and that excites me.
The joys of being a housewife!