Your fridge isn’t cooling your stuff, that’s so… not cool!
Fridges! Warm beverages and empty fridges: Don’t do it!
“My refrigerator isn’t working.” 9 times out of 10 this message comes in when someone arrives with a bunch of food, especially WARM/HOT beverages and loads up the refrigerator. Not only will it take a REALLY long time, like overnight or longer, it will likely cause the fridge to condensate inside and potentially outside. Refrigerators simply are not designed to work going from empty to a large amount of warm products and to cool those products takes lots of time as there is a lot of mass to cool down and none already in the fridge to help hold the cold. Normally, at home, you have all the other already cold stuff that retains a temperature and “helps” the new stuff cool down. Not so when empty. This also means that if you put some milk, eggs, and lunchmeat (perhaps already cool) but with a lot of hot beverages then they may very well not be kept at at a good temp too until everything is cooled down.
Key takeaway?! If you are bringing beverages, buy them cold if you can, or put them on ice in a cooler for that first day or so.
Worth noting: this should NOT affect the freezer except in extreme cases, so your freezer portion should work regardless of what kind of crazy you have going in the fridge (unless of course you stuck a lot of hot beverages in the freezer….); however, if you fill the entire fridge with warm beverages, its entirely possible, since most fridges circulate air from freezer to fridge compartments, that the freezer could get warmer than its set to since it is working super hard trying to cool all those warm beverages….
If on the other hand, you put cold stuff in and its not staying cool. The freezer isn’t working at all (not feeling cold). The lights don’t come on in either compartment. You don’t hear fans or compressors. Reach out so we can get someone out asap!
Stay frosty my friends!
Ah, still with me? Maybe want a little more, or not quite sure about this whole warm beverages thing taking a LONG time… well… here’s some more. 🙂
https://www.houfy.com/kristen-davemaxfield/posts/cooling-your-food-drinks-in-an-empty-refrigerator-15119
