As the host of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, you have a lot to worry about.
Do you have everything you need to prepare the meal? Are your in-laws comfortable? Is there enough food to go around?
With all the anxiety that comes with hosting a holiday dinner, the last thing you want to deal with is a broken kitchen appliance. These 4 Holiday best practices for your kitchen will ensure everything runs smoothly (at least with your appliances).
Cody’s Holiday Best Practices for Your Kitchen
Don’t run your self-clean cycle!
We’ve been repairing appliances for over 25 years, so believe us when we say that oven failure a day or two before the holiday feast is more common than you think.
Here’s the scenario. It’s a day or two before your in-laws are due to arrive, and you decide you want to have the oven clean. You turn on the self-clean cycle and the next thing you know the oven won’t heat. What a disaster!
The self-clean feature is well-known to cause oven failure, which is especially bad news just before a major holiday. The self-clean cycle raises your oven temperature up to 1,000 °F. This extreme heat can cause components such as fuses, circuit boards and heating elements to fail.
To avoid a broken oven the day before your holiday meal, wait until after the holidays to clean your oven or clean your oven with oven cleaner and elbow grease.
Avoid over stuffing (and we don’t mean your face).
Your refrigerator will inevitably be jam packed with food the days leading up to the holidays, so it’s important that you arrange your food carefully. If the refrigerator air vents are covered, they can’t circulate cool air, which may prevent the refrigerator from cooling properly.
If you notice that the refrigerator isn’t cooling, start by rearranging the food in the refrigerator and freezer sections to ensure no air vents are blocked. Keep the door closed for an hour, and then check the temperature again. If the refrigerator starts cooling again, you know that you had a blocked air vent.
Skip the pre-rinse.
Make dishwashing after your holiday meal a whole lot easier by skipping the pre-rinse step before loading your dishwasher. Instead, scrape food chunks directly into the trash and immediately load the dishes into the dishwasher. Ensure all big chunks of food have been removed.
Residue should be left on the dishes! Your dish soap’s cleaning power is activated by food particles. This means that if you fully rinse your dishes, your dish soap can’t do its job properly. Read more about how dishwasher detergents work here.
Be cautious of what goes down the drain.
The last thing you want to deal with during your holiday party is a backed-up drain. To prevent a clogged sink, ensure that you (and your guests) don’t shove food down the drain. In particular, avoid pushing starchy foods such as potatoes and rice down the drain, as these foods can quickly clog the drain. When your mother-in-law offers to peel the potatoes, have her use the trash can rather than the sink’s disposal.
Last year we wrote this blog about how to help your garbage disposal survive Thanksgiving. Follow this advice year around!!
From our family to yours, Happy Holidays!
If you experience appliance failure during the holidays, give us a call at 208-938-1066. We are closed on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, but we’ll be happy to help as quick as possible when we return.
