Buying a New Fridge? Here's Help...

Our old friend Consumer Reports has put together a refrigerator buying guide which looks really useful. To get refrigerator ratings, you have to be a subscriber, but the rest is helpful nonetheless.

OK, All You Kitchen Remodelers...

I know you're out there. (You're reading this blog, right?) A pretty good write-up on Remodeling Your Kitchen for Less in Consumer Reports.

We're going to be doing this at our home in the reasonably near future, so it literally hits close to home for me.

Going Green in the Kitchen...It's not just the Fridge.

For those of us who are concerned about energy usage (shouldn't that be ALL of us?) HD Living has an excellent article on making your kitchen greener. Back in 1990, when we first moved back to Massachusetts, my wife and I rented a house in Andover with avocado appliances. That's not what I'm talking about. Did look nice with the burnt orange countertops, though...

It Won't Help You Select an Appliance, But...

For 15 years,we Americans have been pummeled with the loss of manufacturing jobs to lower-cost countries, primarily China, although Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and other play a part as well. (Korea and Japan are no longer considered low-cost labor markets.) Well, appliance fans, that's all starting to change. There's a great article in Appliance Magazine that discusses the turning of the tide.

When you combine this with the long term economic advantage that the US will gain with the rapidly declining cost of natural gas (which powers a lot of manufacturing processes), we could be looking at a resurgent manufacturing sector. Big Time. Wonder if those Whirlpool and Maytag plants in Ohio are hiring???

Maybe a Fridge for Households with Teens...

Austrian Design Student Wins Electrolux Design Lab 2008Oct. 13, 2008. Stefan Buchberger, from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, won the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition for inventing Flatshare, a modular fridge with individual compartments for people who live with several roommates. Flatshare consists of a base station and up to four stackable modules. The modules allow each user to have his or her own refrigerator space and can be customized with various colorful skins as well as with add-ons like a bottle opener. Handles mounted on the side make it easy to transport the modules. "I got the idea to create the Flatshare fridge because in many shared flats there is a problem with the refrigerator," says Buchberger. "It gets filthy because no one person feels responsible for cleaning it." The Design Lab 2008 award is a prize of approximately US$7,000 and a six-month internship at one of Electrolux global design centers.