When we first started out here at Something Good, the suggestions were meant to be really simple and quick. Maybe you could do Monday’s suggestion from the computer, and maybe Tuesday’s suggestion would require you to go into the living room. As we progressed, more and more suggestions have been things to keep in mind for later. Maybe you didn’t have time to clean and organize an entire room today, but you could bookmark our suggestions for how to go about it so you could come back to it when the cleaning bug bit. Today’s suggestion is a little more in that earlier vein. After you read this post, you could very easily get up from your computer and have done Something Good within 15 minutes.
Your refrigerator most likely has cooling coils on the back or underneath. These coils work most efficiently when they have plenty of air flowing around them. This means that it’s a good idea to allow your fridge to be pulled a little away from the wall. That seems like good advice, but a lot of folks have their refrigerators fitted into an alcove, so there’s not a whole lot of room to rearrange.
There is still something you can do to help those coils do their job efficiently. They just need to be cleaned off. Dust accumulates on the coils over time, and they end up having to work harder and harder to dissipate heat. Just keeping the coils cleaned can decrease the amount of energy your fridge uses by a full 15%. It also helps to extend the life of the compressor.
The coils will generally be located either on the back or underneath of the fridge. If they’re underneath, you’ll have to pop off the kick plate on the front of your refrigerator. Either way, be sure to turn the fridge off first at the temperature control. I’m going to go ahead and unplug mine, too, because I . . . well, mainly because I don’t want to end up winning a Darwin Award. If the coils are on the back, you can pretty easily just vacuum them with a brush and hose attachment. There are also some special brushes that can be used to get into crevices. If the coils are underneath, you will probably want to use a brush. Pull it out and vacuum the dust bunnies from the brush before sticking it back in. If you don’t have a brush, try securing a lightweight towel to the end of a broomstick.
It’s recommended that we clean the refrigerator’s coils once every three months. I guess that means that I’m only an infinite number of months behind! Getting this done will certainly feel like Something Good for both the life of my refrigerator and the total of my electric bill.