Choosing The Right Refrigerator For You
James Brown

For most families, the refrigerator is the star of the kitchen.
It certainly gets the most attention as members open it and
close it several times in a day. In some kitchens it is the
easel that displays the most treasured artwork or a collage of
favorite photos. No other appliance invites people to stand
before it browsing its contents even if they were just viewed
moments ago. When it comes to picking out such an important
appliance, it is important to understand the refrigeration
needs you have and the differences between available
refrigerators.

The first consideration when buying a refrigerator is size. As
a general rule of thumb you need eight to ten cubic feet of
fresh food storage for two adults. For every extra person in
your family, you should add another cubic foot on to this
total. It is really important to get exactly the right size
refrigerator for your needs. If you get a refrigerator that is
bigger than you really need, you will have a lot of empty space
inside and that leads to much higher electric bills, because
your refrigerator has to work so much harder to cool the food.
The opposite of this problem is having too little space. Then
you are continually wasting time trying to fit your food into
the refrigerator and chances are you will end up throwing food
out or making a mess when everything doesn’t fit nicely. Your
goal should be to buy a refrigerator that exactly suits your
capacity needs.

When you think about the size of your refrigerator, don’t just
think capacity. Consider the actual size. Measure the area
where the refrigerator will be placed and then make sure there
is enough room for the refrigerator you want. Make sure that if
there are cabinets over the top of the area where the
refrigerator goes, that the unit you buy is short enough to fit
under them. There is nothing worse than getting your
refrigerator home and finding out that it is too big for your
kitchen. It is also important that the refrigerator isn’t
squeezed into the space. To work at maximum efficiency, a
refrigerator needs a little breathing room.

When it comes to choosing the style of your refrigerator, there
are three basic choices, bottom mount, top mount, and side by
side. A bottom mount refrigerator has the freezer compartment
on the bottom and the refrigerator on the top. The theory
behind this design is that you spend more time in the
refrigerated compartment of your refrigerator than you do in
the freezer. Having the refrigerator on top should therefore
save you a lot of unnecessary bending. A top mount is the
traditional refrigerator that has the freezer on top. This is
the setup you see most often. A side by side refrigerator has a
freezer and refrigerated section that are adjacent to each
other. They often seem less roomy, all though their capacity
can be the same as a top or bottom mount model.

Refrigerators come with many extra features that can turn a
simple appliance that chills our food into a complex machine.
Before you go shopping, it is a good idea to figure out which
features you can live without and which features you must have.
Some refrigerators come with adjustable shelves. How much you
need your shelved to adjust depends on how often you store odd
sizes of food. You also should think about whether you want
spill proof solid trays that don’t leak onto lower shelves when
something is spilled or the traditional wire grill type shelves.


Another feature that varies from model to model is the
icemaker. Some refrigerators have a device that allows you to
get ice or even cold water from a nozzle on the door while
others have the ice maker in the freezer. Getting your ice
cubes from the door saves energy, because you don’t have to
open the freezer every time you want ice. It is important to
remember that icemakers take up freezer space, so if you can’t
afford to lose that, you might want to consider a model that
doesn’t have one.

The most important thing to consider is how the door opens.
Most, but not all, refrigerators have removable handles, so
that the door can be positioned to open to the left or to the
right. Make sure the model you are looking at has this feature
or if it doesn’t, make sure the door opens in the direction you
need it to.

About The Author: James brown writes about Choosing Home
Appliances http://www.homeappliancesonsale.com  and Appliances
for home



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