It's disgusting, but those refrigerator coils you've been ignoring really need to be cleaned. How many years of pet hair, dust, dirt and cooking grease have collected there?
"It's like a blanket on there that's keeping them hot," says Amy of AmyWorks. In the video below, Amy demonstrates how to clean refrigerator coils with a coil brush — a tool that makes this annoying job less annoying and much more effectively completed.
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It's not a difficult procedure, just a messy one. The first step, of course, is to unplug the appliance. After that, it's a simple matter of alternately using and vacuuming the coil brush until the coils are relatively clean. Then vacuum up the mess on the floor, and you're done!
Amy recommends cleaning the coils twice a year if they're accessible from the bottom; once a year if you have to pull the refrigerator out and access the coils from the back. Pet owners may have to clean their coils more often, as air flow pulls pet hair in toward them.
When the coils are free from the "blanket," they don't have to work as hard to keep the inside of the refrigerator cool. This means that, in addition to pleasing aesthetic tastes and keeping allergens to a minimum, keeping a refrigerator's coils clean also helps reduce electricity bills and prolongs the life of this major appliance.
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When was the last time you cleaned off the coils on your refrigerator?