My refrigerator's death throes

The first thing I noticed this morning, was that the fridge/freezer was even more noisy than usual. Like the dehumidifier, it has gotten increasingly loud with age. I've had it for maybe ten years, and in that time it's progressed from a quiet wee thing (like a large, white church mouse) to occasionally producing loud cracking and creaking sounds, sudden enough to induce heart attacks in the elderly; now it's developed a high-volume hum which sounds to me very much like a cry for appliance euthanasia.

What added to our problem this morning was that the freezer door had somehow been left ajar overnight.

Initially, I didn't do anything about this other than to rectify the door position and then tell the boy about it when he got out of bed. The boy was not such a bimbo about it however. He rightly set about going through the freezer contents, tossing out anything that felt thawed. Ten minutes and a shopping bag full of potentially bacterial produce later, our freezer is less than a third full and I've got doubts about the stuff we left in there.

It was a sign I think, to finally do something about replacing the fridge/freezer. I know the boy would much rather we spent our money on something more fun, like another boxed set of Angel DVDs or another X-Box game, or even some flash baby-care equipment. But I'm going to have to put my foot down. I'd love one of these curvy retro designs, preferably in red - but most likely it'll be a boring boxy white thing, perhaps one that beeps at you when you leave the door open for too long.