Ours broke down last August, too. Luckily we have an old (like from the '50's!) fridge in the basement, and a small chest freezer. So all the food went downstairs and we had time to shop around for a new one. We got a new one because our old one was about 20 years old. I still lost some frozen stuff (the worst tragedy was a gallon of ice cream ) because we didn't notice in time, but most food was saved.