My parents bought a harvest gold side-by-side Kenmore refrigerator in 1974. At 22 cubic feet, it had a fancy new feature: a cold water dispenser inside the fridge door (they fixed that design flaw soon afterwards). They had that fridge for over 20 years - from Cincinatti to New Jersey to Houston to Dallas. They finally got rid of it in the mid-90s simply because they were sick of looking at that yellow color. I tried to talk my family into making a mock-u-mentary about saying goodbye to the fridge (which was old enough to drink by that point in human years), but no luck.

About two years later, we moved into our home in Portland and lo and behold - there, sitting in the kitchen, was the exact same model refrigerator. It worked beautifully, and despite having picked out my dream fridge after working on a project to redesign side-by-side refrigerators for Whirlpool while at e-lab, I couldn’t bear to part with that harvest gold box. It still worked. So I waited, and waited.

Finally, in 2003, the yellow box began to chant in some ancient tongue. It would inevitably begin in the middle of night, or right at naptime, so that Smoke, our late Sheltie -  who barked when the earth moved - had no choice but to bark back. For a while you could bump the fridge and it would stop - kind of like smacking a copier or printer. But as it is with most appliances and other things in life, physical abuse eventually fails. The fan belt and other necessary parts were long out of stock at Sears, leaving us no choice but to buy — drumroll, please — the stainless bottom mount freezer with a door not a drawer and shelves-in-the-door that could hold a gallon of milk that I’d wanted since spending h-o-u-r-s and h-o-u-r-s looking at, thinking about, and analyzing refrigerators on that e-lab project. Goodbye, yellow box, hello Amana.

The Amana is slick, the middle class version of the sub-zero. It is about capacity and functions like a drawer, vs. the sub-zero which is about display, like shelves. Much to Scott’s dismay, you could not add inches by piling paper and magnets to the front of the unit - making it the cleanest spot in the kitchen. My little spot where I could pretend I am a minimalist, and have a daily moment of zen chic.

And it was full, full, full because I’ve been home and cooking up a storm. The operative word being was because it’s empty now. Empty of the maple syrup, four different kinds of olives, meat, ice cream, many different kinds of cheese, leftover chicken tarragon, eggs, vegetables, butter, milk, homemade jam from friends, the tequila and coffee drink, boxes of pie crust and pastry sheets, bags of peas and spinach, you name it. It’s all gone.

Because the #$(&@#^%)*&^#$ thing is designed to break. The repairman explained that he works on these all the time now - and was sorry to share that the quote to repair the fridge would cost 3/4 the amount to replace the unit with a new one.The compressor was covered for 5 years, he explained, and we were lucky it lasted 3 beyond that without problems. Sigh.

So now, not only have we disposed of a ridiculous amount of really, really good food, but we have no choice but to add to landfill and send the box off to that floating island of garbage or some such place.

Planned obsolescence. Disgusting.

The upside: our kids were absolutely amazing at helping clean everything up, emptying jars to re-use for spices and storage, and spent a ton of time soaking jars in the bathtub to remove labels. Knowing how upset I was about wasting all that food, they shared many hugs, sang instead of bicker, and proclaimed sadness over what they had to dispose of in a way that made me step back and consider that we might be teaching them the lessons we hope we are. They understand that we have choices - to repair  clothes, use handmade ceramics for dinnerware, etc. rather than simply buy something new for the sake of the new. Where we cannot fight planned obsolescence with our major appliances, we can make choices in other parts of our lives that counter the horrible thought of yet another refrigerator sitting in landfill somewhere.

And I know that they will find fantastic ways to turn the refrigerator box into all kinds of fantastic adventures. It will arrive about the same time as our 5-year-old-niece, and help make the lemon feel more like lemonade.