How to Clean a Fridge on a Boat

Our 'refrigerator' is an insulated compartment witha top access hatch and a cooling plate on the inboard side. It’s not like the ones you landlubbers may have. You have to pull on a rope to open it up and it’s not square or rectangle, it’s this weird angular, trapezoid shape.

Every once in awhile we have to defrost it, and just clean it out in general. This evening I spilled a full can of salsa down the outboard side, thus initiating what I would be doing for a large portion of my Wednesday evening, cleaning the fridge. Luckily, Eric helped me with it; it was time to clean that puppy anyway.

Here is the glamour of our fridge. Like, the Pioneer Woman says, I'm just keeping it real here folks:

 

Blech.

So, out came all of the compartments. I do all of my big dish washing out on the finger of the dock.

It's actually kind of convenient to wash your dishes outdoors. You can get as messy as you want and the ocean is a natural garbage disposal.

We have to knock out all of the ice build up to get the defrost process going. Gracias for doing the hard work Eric. He has big muscles, so I always ask him to do the hardwork. Then I make him brownies :)

We weren't anticipating this defrosting tonight so we had some food we didn't want to go to waste.

Eric built a mini cooler in the sink so we could save as much of it as possible.

So here's the actual fridge when it's empty. I need to wipe it down with some vinegar and wait for the defrost process to finish, then we'll fill her up and get back to using our odd little shaped ice box.

Although some boats do have freezers, we do not, so everything we eat is refrigerator fresh. I miss having Edamame on a regular basis, but it was actually quite surprising how easy it was to adjust to living without a freezer.

I'll post a pic later when she's all pretty again. In the meantime, here's a pic of a modern day woman. This is how to look cute,while doing dishes on the finger of a dock when you live on sailboat. I posted this pic in my thread on sailing clothes for liveaboard women.

Ladies, if you are a liveaboard who reads this blog, I'd love to see/hear your thoughts on cleaning boat fridges and liveaboard style.

Update on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 20:52 by Charlotte

All clean!

Oh, we made a run to the store tonight. We've been really working on improving how many fruits and vegetables we eat. I love what our hammock looks like after we go grocery shopping. Nom nom nom!

Comments

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Funny you post about fridges because there was a meme on twitter a few weeks for #fridgeFriday. Ha ha! Here is mine that day: http://twitpic.com/5p6ce

Also, what a NICE BIG fridge you have! We just have the one fridge with the small freezer area & two shelves. The bottom shelf is ridiculous to get into & we never use it. We go to the commissary about once every 3 days. That seems to be a good plan because you never know when they will turn off the power on the docks for "unplanned maintenance" and I don't feel as secure about leaving milk or things like that in for too long anyway.

On a related note, this past few months we have been doing more cooking on-board. Like real cooking, which is great. It really took us awhile to get comfy with the set up for cooking & feeling like we can do real recipes, but we are now there so we hardly eat out anymore. I'd love to see some of your fave recipes -- right now I'm a panini fanatic.

Thanks for sharing your fridge!