A dorm fridge is one of the most important appliances for a student away at college. Sometimes, just adding a fridge to a dorm room can make it seem more like home, not to mention it can make studying a lot easier if food and drinks are at hand, instead of having to constantly go out and buy them at a convenience store. However, student are also pretty busy and don’t even have much time on their hands to clean their dorm rooms. Because of this, dorm fridges are often abused and neglected, therefore they get broken easily. To prevent this from happening to you, here are a few tips on how to care for your dorm fridge which won’t take up a lot of your time.

First off, if the primary reason why you can clean your dorm fridge is because you don’t have the time to do a lot of extensive cleaning, you can prevent your fridge from rotting, becoming smelly and degrading just by doing simple cleanup steps each day. Although it may sound like an insignificant thing to do, a simple wipe-down of your fridge every now and then can do wonders for your appliance. Being compact, sometimes the fridge becomes a mini counter where books, drinks, laundry and food can be placed. Stains, sludge and sharp objects can degrade the outer covering of the fridge and without cleaning the fridge constantly, it may become really unsightly and even rot slowly.

Food inside the fridge can spill and certain stenches may spread throughout its compartments. You can clean out the fridge once a week and if it has compartments like a veggie bin and egg holder, you have to wash them thoroughly before putting them back inside. Cleaning the inside of your fridge helps lessen the bacteria content which may contaminate the food inside it, specially those which are not properly wrapped.

Set your fridge at the right temperature only. Frost build-up in the freezer may lead to the degradation of the fridge’s freezing system and in time, might make it inefficient. An inefficient fridge won’t preserve food in the same way it used to, and may waste a lot of kilowatts in electricity just to maintain a decent temperature.

Although the temptation is there, refrain from placing heavy objects and containers with liquid inside on top of the fridge to avoid any untoward accidents. Never place anything inside the fridge that isn’t supposed to be there. Students are known to place the weirdest things in their refrigerators, like chemicals for school projects and the like.