Samsung

Things Mom Never Told You, Vol IX

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

Time for another installment of…

How often have gone into your kitchen after dark, and only needed the light on over your stove, only to realize in order to see the button for the light on your over-the-stove microwave you must first turn on another light? Kind of seems to defeat the purpose, doesn’t it? Even with all of the technological improvements to microwaves that have been made including drawer styles where you only need wave your hand in front of a panel to open it, manufacturers still haven’t figured out how to have some sort of way for us to figure out where the light is. Maybe a dimple in the panel? How about a single always on LED light behind a light bulb symbol? It’s not like the thing doesn’t have electricity going to it all the time for Pete’s sake.

Enter the microwave light finder, new from the mind of Beth. OK maybe not new, I did it with our last microwave that died and my husband thought it was such a wonderful idea I’m doing it again. I took a small rounded clear plastic self-sticking dot and put it on the button on the microwave panel. MIcrowaveNow even in total darkness, we can just find the raised bump  by touch and voila! Instant light. You can see the dot in the photo at right and about every 6 months or so my husband says “that was SUCH a s good idea”. As a matter of fact, Samsung, here is the criteria for the perfect microwave: 1. Lighted   Screen Shot 2020-01-04 at 8.29.13 AM (or dimpled) light button.

  1. See picture at right for which buttons can be eliminated due to their being unnecessary. 3. Simplify, simplify, simplify. 4. Charge less. Seriously who uses all of these? I already know how long to put butter in the microwave to soften it by virtue of having done it for 20 years without a button to tell me, I don’t need to have a sensor for that. I also know how long to cook other food, again, no special sensor needed. Popcorn, 3 minutes. Hot water in a cup, 3 minutes. Slice of leftover pizza, 1 minute. See, no special buttons needed!

Speaking of useful places for a little raised button, we have a Decora-style dimmer on the light in the master bedroom, and I’m always hitting the wrong button, accidentally turning the light on full, when I wanted to hit a different button and just barely turn it on, so I’ve added one of the little clear buttons where I need it. NO more bright lights at 11:00 PM! Of course, since the switch also happens to be a smart switch connected to our phones, if I was smarter, I would say “Hey, Siri, turn the bedroom light on at 5%” before I walked up the stairs, and the problem would have been solved that way too!

While I’m on a rant, why has no one made a string of incandescent Christmas lights  that are only about 5 or 6 lights long, and the set comes with decorative blackout covers for unused lights? Yep, you heard that right, blackout covers. How many of us have changed over to LED lights on our Christmas trees either because we like the brightness of the lights, or want to save money? But in doing that, we can no longer connect our old Hallmark ornaments that needed to actually be plugged into an incandescent light string to work. This year I ended up buying a 10-light string so we could enjoy them again, and unfortunately not all of the old bases are the same shape so a little re-rigging was in order. However, the old ornaments are once again lighted, moving and talking, but we also have 5 other lights that look weird and out of place compared to the LED lights. So, there’s a solution but a bit of a hinkey one. (Word of caution, if you do this, do NOT plug LED and incandescent into the same series.) It’s best to use a surge suppressor and plug each type of light into a different spot on the surge suppressor.

Are you someone that loves to grind your own coffee from beans? If so, you may have noticed bags of beans have a funny little disc on them near the top of the bag and wondered what it’s for. Well, my husband did a little research for you. That’s a one-way valve designed to release the carbon dioxide off-gassed by the beans, and prevent oxygen from getting into the bag, preserving freshness. Without it, the bag would eventually expand until it blew up, but in order for it to work properly, the bag needs to be standing upright.

Last on the list, a gadget that truly works. How many times do you need to interrupt your dryer in the middle of the cycle to untangle/unroll the sheets? I usually did it twice, sometimes three times but not anymore! I give you the “Wad-Free“. I linked to it on Amazon but do want to say I am not an affiliate, and make no money off of it. Screenshot 2024-09-12 at 7.13.44 AMI just love it. You attach the 4 corners of the sheet to the 4 corners of the plastic disk, (They attach a little like a garter). Voila! No more tangled up sheets. I don’t remember where I heard about them but finally decided to try them and after 4 months, I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. The worst thing about them is that the 4 corners come out slightly wrinkled because of being attached to the little garter thingy, and there are folks in the reviews that fuss about that. Honestly, I don’t have anyone that persnickety in my house. If a guest is going to see those little wrinkles, I can’t call for a hotel room for them. I also know there were some folks that didn’t have as good luck as I’ve had, and I think perhaps they had king size sheets, which might be too big for this to work. We have queen size and they’re perfect.

What tips or ideas do you have to make life easier?

 

The Great Refrigerator Adventure

/ Beth Younker / 1 Comment

As I mentioned in a recent post, we’ve been updating the kitchen appliances, and decided it was time to replace the fridge when it appeared it was possessed. We had a side-by-side that was 18 years old, and it had been repaired a couple of times already. The last time he was here, the repairman said to me “don’t spend money repairing it again, it’s not worth it. You’ve already sunk more into it that it would cost to buy a new one.” Hoookay.

So I became aware of this apparent “possession” when I would open the door to work on a meal and notice things were frozen on the fridge side – things that shouldn’t be, like lettuce, liquids or even eggs. I would look at the temperature dial and it would be on the coldest setting, and I would then ask hubby why he’d done that, whereupon he’d reply he hadn’t, and I’d say “well someone did” and we’d blame the cat that suddenly developed opposable digits. After about the 4th time this happened  and we took turns having fun blaming each other before we blamed the cat, we figured it was time to just kill the fridge and get a new one. We’d been thinking about this for some time already, and because we had a limited space to work in (without using a reciprocating saw and/or moving cabinets) the choices we had were limited, particularly since I had specific features I really wanted.

Looking online we found a scratch and dent in the model we wanted – a beautiful Samsung with French doors, the variable temp drawer and bottom freezer. It was in a town about 50 miles away and the salesman was kind enough to text photos to us of the scratches and dents, and we were confident our magnet collection would cover them, so we bought it and arranged for delivery.

It came on January 20, and I was SO excited. I had waited so LONG for the fridge. It was big, and sleek and gorgeous. Yes, it had some dings, but like I said, our magnets hid them, and we had it set up in no time. That evening we were getting everything organized and 24 hours later we had ice cubes from the dispenser. Life was good. I got it connected to the Samsung SmartThings app, which, among other things will alert you if your kids or spouse leaves the door open on the fridge.

On Monday, January 26 that’s when it all went to hell. The SmartThings app gave me an alert, telling me that the freezer compartment was too warm, and there was water on the floor, in the fridge, and the frozen veggies were melted. My first thought was an ice cube got stuck in the chute but then we realized the fridge was also warm. We tried to reset everything a few times without success and the next day called customer service at the store. They said they couldn’t come out until Friday, so we then called Samsung directly who said they would have someone there on Thursday. Well that guy tried everything, and couldn’t fix it. He set up ANOTHER call for the following Tuesday with another colleague to try replacing the compressor.

Keep in mind, it’s the end of January. In Minnesota. We are living out of 4 coolers in our garage. I know, I know, everyone is thinking “but it’s cold in Minnesota, right? So you don’t need ice for the coolers, that’s a good thing”. And you’d be right…except when it’s below zero and you have to go to the coolers MANY times a day for every little thing. Milk, ice cubes, butter, eggs, condiments. That good thing becomes a not so good thing really fast.

Tuesday comes, repair dude tries replacing the compressor and that doesn’t work. Now he’s getting concerned and calls Samsung to get permission to cut the lines open, which they do. I’ll bet most of you didn’t know that your refrigerator has some sort of system to dry the air in it and keep it fresh. Well it does, and our Samsung used silicone beads to do this. They are normally white or light gray in color, but when the guy cut the line and pulled out the container they were in, they looked like this:

5E82022F-6B6C-4AC6-BE65-C566A36D33C5

Yuck! Yeah, that’s not how they ought to look. That’s what happens when the fridge is tipped over on it’s side or back, and oil leaks and contaminates the entire system, and at that point your fridge is ruined. He sent a photo to Samsung, who agreed (in principle) it was toast. (One interesting thing that the repair guy did mention is that he sees this happen a lot with the units that come from Korea, not so much with the ones from Mexico, making him think it might be an issue on the cargo ships with loading or unloading.) Getting it formally approved for warranty replacement however, took about another 10 days and multiple phone calls.

Once that happened, I called the store we bought it from, got the store manager involved, and had to do some finagling to arrange for a replacement but eventually got that squared away as well. By the time we had agreed to have a new one sent out, it was February 10. Unfortunately the manager called me back a few hours later to tell me that they didn’t have it in the warehouse and it would need to be special ordered, which should take about a week. Fine.

A week goes by, and he calls again, full of apologies, because apparently 3 other folks have had issues with this fridge and also needed to replace it, and the damn thing is on BACK ORDER, and we have no idea when it will be in. He was also kind enough to be sensitive to how long we had already lived out of coolers, and said “this has gone on long enough, I’ve arranged to have a loaner refrigerator delivered to you.” A loaner? Who knew that was even a thing? That arrived about February 17, and we’ve been grateful ever since to have it.

So remember what I said about the replacement on backorder? I’m guessing it may need to come from Korea, and I really have no idea when it might happen, since we have this tiny little complication called coronavirus…

But we’ve got the loaner, and life is OK.

Update: I started writing this weeks ago, and realized I’d never posted it. Guess what? The new fridge arrives today!! Let’s hope it lasts longer than 6 days this time.