Hi! I'm Sharla with Freezer Meals 101 and today I'm going to attempt to defrost my freezer for the
first time. This is my um extra freezer but one that I use all the time because of all the freezer
meals so it is not the best quality freezer and it gets a lot of ice buildup. My other freezer seems
to auto defrost or something. It never gets ice buildup, but this one I need to do today because
I can't fit the amount of meals that I need to fit in it because it has so much ice build up so
this will also give me a chance to clean it out. As you can see, it's got tons of ice buildup
and I'm getting ready for a massive freezer meal assembly this week and we'll be filling both the
freezers and I will need all the space I can get so all of this extra space and this will be able,
will enable me to fit quite a few more meals so since I'm doing this anyway, I'll go through
and get rid of any food that's got freezer burn or anything that hasn't been used in too long
and it'll help me to organize. So check back in a little later and I'll update you on the progress
here. uh I had to actually google how to defrost a freezer because I had no idea, but apparently you
just unplug it and funny story... I asked one of my sons if he could move the freezer to unplug it
because I'm not strong enough and he pointed out to me that the plug is actually
in the wall not anywhere behind the freezer so we had a good laugh about that. Anyway um
okay, I'm gonna get started. I'm gonna bring a cooler over
to store the food in and some of it. I'm gonna put some in a box and put outside on the deck
because it's way below freezing here because of the time of year so um yeah... be right back.
so I have the freezer emptied and I just thought I would show you something kind of funny.
This is how bad this freezer was. Up here, I don't know if you can quite see that, but right there
is a label. There is a freezer meal under there so defrost your freezer more often than I do mine.
That is the lesson here. Okay I'm going to update later. I'm also going to put
some towels down on the floor in case some of this when it thaws goes on to the floor
um and then I'll wipe everything out and be really careful of the coils in there.
So I'm clearly going to call this video "how not to defrost your freezer". It hasn't been
going well. I thought I watched this video on how to do it and she like put two little tea
towels down and it was fine, but that didn't work. We like had a little flood on the floor
and there's water everywhere. I had like two tea towels and a couple of bath towels and beach
towels and it still wasn't enough and so we've got the shop vac out now and we're trying to
fix the floor. My jeans are soaked. It's still like dripping like crazy. We still have a lot
up there to melt um so clearly, if you're going to defrost your freezer, don't follow
my advice at all. It's going really badly uh and I thought this would take like no time at all,
but it's kind of taken all day so far and um up here we still have those mystery freezer meals
that are like now a little less mystery, but I still have no idea what that one is or
that one so um yeah. Anyway do not do what I do if you want to defrost your freezer.
We are continuing with the comedy of errors that has been defrosting the freezer. The video I
watched... the lady was super calm and she just like was like "you just wipe it out" but yeah
it's not going that way for me. So I had the idea that I would take the chunks of ice that like from
this kind of area and I would pull them off and put them in a bucket which did work pretty well
until I realized there was a hole in the bucket and that was leaking all over the floor too!
So thankfully the shop vac came in handy again and as you can see, we're getting some accumulation
of water down there that I need to soak up with the shop vac again but I have a new idea.
I've gotten out a hair dryer and I'm gonna attempt that big clump of ice there
with. I'm gonna attempt to speed it up with the hairdryer so I will let you know how it goes.
So we've discovered what the mystery meals were.
I pulled out a paint roller from the top here and then this one is Sloppy Joe's and it's been
a long time since I didn't use printed labels on freezer meals, years, so that one's going in
the garbage and that back there... I can tell that one is red sauce which is like a homemade
pasta or pizza sauce and that's got to be even older than the Sloppy Joes,
so that one's gonna go in the garbage too. Kind of reached the point where it's like "why did I start
doing this in the first place?" This is a disaster. I've blown the breaker because I
was running the hair dryer and the shop vac on the same electrical outlet, so i had to go downstairs
and flip that switch. We got lots of drippage and I'm gonna have to grab out the shop vac again and
get some more vacuuming happening for the moisture and then I'm gonna get going on the hair dryer
again, but I just can't do them at the same time or I blow the breaker so that's where we're at
so. So far the stages of defrosting my freezer were like me all chipper this morning "oh yeah,
we're gonna get this ready for freezer meals this week... it's gonna make so much more space... it's
gonna be so worth it" and then um many disasters later, in the afternoon, I thought "I have a
system now. I can do the hair dryer and the shop vac at the same time" Um, that didn't go well,
so now I have a new system which is like alternating the hair dryer and the shop vac and
like targeting specific areas so then I can pull chunks of ice off. I have a new bucket for the
ice chunks. This one doesn't have a hole in it, so feeling a little bit more encouraged about that.
Let's see what other stage are we in... here I found frozen margaritas in the other fridge
freezer and we're trying to get rid of all freezer things to get ready for freezer meals this week.
and this is not really how I thought I was gonna spend my Sunday. I seriously thought it was gonna
take like a few hours and I wasn't gonna have to babysit it. It wasn't gonna be a big deal,
but um yeah... do the opposite of what I did if you want to defrost your freezer well
and not flood the games room in your house. It is like 8:15 at night... feels like 2 in the morning.
This is been a long day and I didn't really do anything except
vacuum with a shop vac and hold the blow dryer, but anyway um this is done.
At one point, I thought "do I really need that fourth shelf? Maybe I'll just quit now and have
three shelves and that's better than nothing", but uh hopefully, I will feel like it's worth it
when I go to fill this with freezer meals. I am now... I have some hot soapy or warm soapy water
and I'm going to wipe down the entire freezer, then I'm going to refill it
um a little bit with what I have in the coolers that I took out today and then
I'm going gonna call it a day. So this is a tutorial of how not to defrost your freezer
okay so it's totally done and as you can see, lots, lots more room without the giant uh icicles
or ice dams... I don't know what you call them, the giant chunks of ice
so uh
probably in the end, I'll feel like it's worth it but tonight, I feel like I kind of wasted a day
um yeah Anyway, see you later guys!