How to defrost a freezer?

We've been in our flat almost a year now and have just realized that our freezer badly needs defrosting because the drawers no longer push in all the way.  I always had frost-free freezers in the U.S. so I'm clueless as to how to defrost it.  Any advice?

Turn the freezer off, take all the food out, put pans of hot water in (to move things along), leave the door slightly ajar, and wait.  The ice will melt and water will stream all over your floor - so you might want to have some dish towels laid out in front of the freezer.  As tempting as it is, don't use anything to pick the ice off - you might break something.  Personally, I have used a hair dryer to speed things up, but I don't know if that's a good recommendation. 

The only time I did it.....

Made sure nothing very perishable was in Fridge.  Turned the whole thing off.  Opened door and made sure I had LOADS of towels on hand.  As it started to melt I hacked away at ice chunks and put in sink.

The neighbors downstairs didn't complain and there was no lasting mildew or mold.  BUT....I am not sure this was the proper way to deforst a freezer.  

(after Carrie's post...glad to see I wasn't a complete moron in my methods)

Have tried open and let defrost along with hair dryer.  Two big issues are:

a) time
b) towels

You are looking at as much as a few gallons of water coming off drip drip drip.  You can try buckets inside to catch some, but expect a pretty wet and messy time of things.

Unplug, of course, for safety, and whatever you do, don't go for the knife and screwdriver route as that can be ugly.

Good luck.  You have an adventure upcoming. 

whatever you do, don't go for the knife and screwdriver route as that can be ugly.

This made me laugh out loud because when brainstorming with my husband he thought both a knife and screwdriver would be a good idea

Um, not a particularly good one.  Trust me ... freon stinks.

And if you live in a rental property with icky kitchen carpeting, trust me it will be very messy. Towels only do so much. 

Knife and screwdriver can easily penetrate the innards of the fridge and you'll have a stick and dangerous mess everywhere. 

(That said, when you get to dripping for a few hours, you'll really be tempted to slide a knife under the ice and pry loose a big section). 

If the urge to stab and thrust and cut is too strong, maybe a wooden spatula might be in order.

I think you also see from this thread the number of comments about towels.  Believe me--after you're done--you'll understand.  It will take a great deal of towels--maybe all that you have.  You might consider doing this on wash day so you don't have to do an extra load of towels.

I use sponges, not towels... and I do use a hairdryer.  I pony-clip it to my camera tripod.  Then I can walk away for a while.

Sponges are a better solution than towels, I think.

A wooden spatula is a good idea. I turn ours off, let it sit for about an hour, and start hacking with the spatula a bit. You can also buy a product from Lakeland that helps melt the ice but this is best used on small amounts of ice, not when you can't push the drawer shut!

Ideally you should plan this when your freezer is pretty bare of food. We need to do it but I have a huge cut of pork in there from our farmer friends. As it's too big for the 2 of us, we need an occasion to fix it. So the defrosting will have to wait a bit longer!

my friend from Korea and I were just chatting about this today. We've never had to do it in our own countries... why is it the case here??

I never unplug it. I use either a flat wooden cooking spoon to hack at the ice or a metal spatula to scrap it way. I don't seem to make a very wet mess.

I get a lot of ice in the back of my fridge too. I knocked it out last night.  I turned down the temp after I saw the lemon juice go frozen.

If you're going to be doing any prying, remember that there are probably little cooling tubes in there.  They're probably completely covered in ice and you may think it's just one big chunk of ice.  Just don't pull too hard. 

We had a screwdriver/defrosting incident in the freezer at work once.  Not nice.

I just did this recently.  Ours was covered in a massive amount of ice.

I unplugged it first, got some towels out to put around the bottom (just in case), pulled out all the drawers, put the tub we use to wash dishes in the bottom to catch the water/ice.  Then I put the kettle on!  I used a small pyrex measuring cup to pour boiling water over the ice, and it melted it away very quickly (you can see how necessary it is to have something to catch the water underneath).  Once it started to break up a bit, I could easily pry off loose bits with my hands.

It didn't get too messy, but I did use a couple of towels and a sponge.

Good luck!

Thank you to everyone for your helpful advice!  This is the one time I'm glad to have a tiny fridge/freezer

Last time I did this I was lucky enough to have a garden!

Just took the food out, moved the fridge into the garden, and stuck pans of boiling water in it.



Vicky