One morning recently, I got up and came downstairs to find the refrigerator door hanging open. We had shoved something in a bit too tightly the night before, and it pushed the door open after we left. The fridge had been running all night; the temperature inside was in the mid-50s.
Yes, we had to throw some stuff out; fortunately our inventory was down. But it was time to look for a way to keep that from happening.
We ended up ordering two things, and are happy with both:
REFRIGERATOR DOOR ALARM: This little device sticks to the refrigerator door, with a magnet stuck to the freezer door just above it. As long as it senses the magnet, it’s happy. But open either door and it chirps. Keep the door open a while, and it chirps again. After a minute, it really starts complaining with a long and whiny BEEEP!!!
REFRIGERATOR DIGITAL THERMOMETER: While shopping for that little device, I ran across this. Two sensors–for the fridge and freezer–monitor the temperatures. A nice digital display hangs on the wall nearby.
I immediately found out our fridge and freezer were horribly maladjusted! The freezer was below zero; the fridge was in the upper 40s. I tweaked those two controls (they interact) over the next couple of days and they are now in the range recommended by various government agencies.
It’s also a real education about the variation of temperatures within the fridge. It’s about 15 degrees warmer in the door compartments than at the back wall (so now I know where to put my beer). The great thing is that you see these measurements without opening the door, which, of course, screws everything up.
The thermometer also has an alarm function which I’ve not yet set but will soon.
And the next step will be set up the Alexa SmartGuard function to listen for that alarm sound and, when it hears it, yell at us up in the bedroom. She can be trained to do things like that (for example, recognize the sound of a window breaking); we’ve not yet explored it.
