I bet you’re wondering how someone can learn something from your typical kitchen appliance, right? Let me tell you a story . . .
We bought a new refrigerator this weekend. I was mostly excited about it; after all, who doesn’t love to get new and shiny things? But only “mostly” excited, because for as long as we’ve had our old fridge—about twenty-five years now—I’ve said that when we finally replaced it, the new one would have ice and water in the door. Brian has never wanted that, but it’s long been my opinion that he got his way the first time around, so I should get to pick the next one. And though he disagreed with my thought process, he didn’t really argue about it too much.
But then something even more new-fangled came about: French doors. I got distracted by the novelty of it all, and for the past couple of years, I’ve been thinking we might want to go that route when we finally gave up on our old clunker, though I had some serious reservations about the freezer situation. But, Brian really liked the bottom freezers he’d seen, so I figured it would be a nice compromise: I’d get my ice and water, he’d get his bottom freezer, and it would look really nice. What could be wrong with that?
Sadly, what I’ve realized in the past few months as I’ve been researching, is that the typical French door models are far too big for our current refrigerator space. Oh, they would fit, but hang out past the wall, and stick out past the countertop, and just generally look a little bit awkward, completely overshadowing the new and shiny effect. So, we opted for a smaller version, which allowed us to get the nice looks, but—unfortunately—meant I had to give up my long-anticipated ice and water in the door. But at least I was getting a built in ice-maker, something I’ve spent the past 25 years without, so I thought it was a compromise I could be okay with. And, like I said, I still thought it looked pretty nice.
See? New and shiny.
But now, it’s 36 hours later, we’ve moved all the stuff over to our new fridge, and my worst fears have come to pass: the bottom freezer is really a pain. There’s no good way to organize things, and it’s way too small for stuff we normally keep on hand. (Well, not way too small, but at least a little bit too small, and that’s with everything crammed in so tight we can’t see what we’re looking for.) So now I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on something that’s not really going to meet even my basic needs, and I’m still destined to spend the next couple of decades without ice and water in my refrigerator door. Definitely puts a damper on the excitement of a new appliance.
The moral of this story: Be true to yourself; don’t let the new and shiny things lead you from the path of something that you’ve always wanted.
What life lessons have you learned from an unexpected source? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
