Remember this summer when I told you that I had been chosen as a Maytag Mom Kitchen Ambassador? Well it arrived about a month ago, and I love it! The Maytag Bottom-Freezer Refrigerator with Spill Catcher Shelves the 6.2 cu. Ft. Capacity Electric Range with Triple-Choice and Speed Heat Elements and the Maytag Jetclean Plus with Fully Integrated Controls.
I have never, ever had a complete new set of appliances before. Of course when I was in the military and moving every couple of years I had whatever was in the rental we wound up with. Finally when we moved here to NY we bought a house. That first house came with a set of appliances-but we wanted a newer fridge. So we went out and bought a new fridge and moved the old one to the garage (as a “beer fridge”). Eventually the dishwasher in that house broke-it was ancient-so we purchased a new one. A year or two after that a friend renovated her kitchen and suddenly her almond stove with the glass top didn’t match any longer–so she bought a new white stove and since I’d been wanting a glass top stove I bought her used almond one.
It was all piecemeal-and some of it was used. When we moved from that house to our larger current house we brought all the appliances with us. We actually did a swap–for about 2 months we owned both houses, so we swapped the older ones in the “new” house up to the house we were trying to sell and brought our stuff down. So we wound up with almond appliances in our cherry kitchen. Which isn’t exactly what you’d see on HGTV, but hey everything at least worked.After living here for several years things were starting to get old. The buttons on the range didn’t work quite right. Some of the paint had been scrubbed off the cook top. I had realized years before that I really, really didn’t like a side by side fridge–I don’t care how many cubic feet you say I have, those narrow shelves in both the fridge and in the freezer drive me nuts and always seem to small for, well, everything!
All of that is the very long way of saying how absolutely, positively, over the moon glad I was to be getting all new kitchen appliances–even if I was giving up my in door water dispenser. (note: The kids asked “Where are we going to get water to drink from???”. . . uh, the faucet…) I’m a from scratch cook and I cook almost every single day-frequently multiple times a day. My fridge, range and dishwasher get a workout-so to get a brand new set of appliances from trusted household name like Maytag??? Well, let’s just say they will be well, well used.
(note: Did you know that Maytag has been around for more than 100 years? Really–over a century! It was founded in 1893. )
When the big day arrived (and after I had been frantically clearing out the fridge and freezer, packing stuff into coolers, moving other stuff to my mom’s fridge, etc etc etc) I was practically jumping up and down by the time the big moving truck showed up!
In the way of old houses, the only way that stuff was going to fit through the doors it needed to in order to get into the house was to come in the front door and then be rolled all the way to the back of the house. Sigh. It would have been too easy to be able to use the back door. Even with that they had to remove the door off the fridge.
Everything took a a short rest in the living room while we removed all the old appliances. And let me tell you-if you haven’t slid out your range or your dishwasher lately-blech. A LOT of crud winds up under there. I had expected that a few things over the years had been pushed off the top of the fridge and wound up behind it. . .but I could not believe how much stuff was back there. It didn’t seem to faze the installers–they said that they had seen much worse.
Once everything was installed it just looked SO PRETTY. I love the look of stainless steel-and I think it looks far better next to the cherry cabinets.
I had never seen the inside of my fridge so clean. Don’t worry, I know it won’t last!
Even though this fridge is smaller than my previous one, it doesn’t really feel like it because it has the full size shelves as opposed to those narrow ones in the side by side. Also because it sticks out less into the kitchen the room feels larger!
I also realized while re-filling the fridge that I have a problem. “Hello, My name is Jenn and I’m addicted to mustard”. Seriously folks-who on earth needs ELEVEN bottles of mustard? I’ve managed to consolidate and use up a few and I’m down to a healthier four bottles now.
Now that Halloween is over and the holidays are fast approaching I’m going to be spending a LOT of time using my new appliances-especially that gorgeous stove! There are two things I’m really looking forward to using for the big family meals and my holiday baking:
1. The “EvenAir™ Convection” feature. Basically the oven has a fan it in that will help rotate the heat around so that you maintain a constant temperature all throughout the oven. Why is that cool? Because it means you can use all three racks, fill them all up with different foods/dishes that you are baking (as long as they all use the same temperature of course) and it will all cook evenly. No “hot” or “cold” spots! That is going to be awesome for Thanksgiving Dinner!
2. The AquaLift™ Self-Clean Technology. I hate cleaning my oven. It seems like you usually have two lousy choices. You can use that terribly caustic spray stuff or you can use the self clean feature that jacks the oven temperature up to like 500 degrees and keeps it there long enough to bake all the crud off. The spray stuff is just full of nasty chemicals, and my oven always stinks the first few times I bake after I use it (which makes me wonder what’s going into my food). The self clean cycle gets so hot that I feel like I have to monitor it–and then it locks the oven until it’s all the way cooled down which means my oven is tied up for several hours. The Aqua lift just sounds so amazing-you put some water into the bottom of the oven, it heats up to around 200 degrees and steams off all the gunk. Open, wipe and your are done! Low temps, fast cycle and no nasty chemicals. I almost can’t wait for my oven to get dirty so that I can try it!
So what kind of things do you want me to test out on these appliances? What information are you especially interested in hearing about? Let me know!
For more information on Maytag you can check out the Maytag Page, Maytag Facebook Page, and Maytag on Twitter.
Catherine says
How exciting! Those stainless steel appliances look beautiful in your cherry kitchen. 🙂 Make sure you test out the convection oven before the big day, though – cooking times may change! You don’t want to be eating your thanksgiving dinner at 10am or have a over-dried turkey. 🙂
JoannaTopaz says
How backbreaking is the freezer on the bottom configuration of the fridge? We’re going to be in the market for a new fridge soon — and my husband thinks he wants one like that, but he has sciatica flareups, so I think he’s wrong. (I think I’ve heard you mention that you have back problems, too?)
Is it possible for a homeowner to move the new fridge “on their own” for that annual vacuuming of the coils you’re, ahem, “supposed” to do? (My fridge hasn’t been moved for 10 years. Three adults working together couldn’t budge it. I’m sure it’s much scarier under there than yours was!)
Becka says
I’d like to hear how you like the dishwasher. We had a Maytag in our previous home and it cleaned very well. We now have a GE–probably put in by the builder in bygone days and it does not clean very well.