1. Overloading your fridge: If you tend to stock up on groceries less often, and buy lots of food at a time, you could be damaging your fridge. Too much food in the fridge makes it more difficult for air to circulate freely; this, in turn, makes it more difficult for the fridge to get the temperature down. If this happens, the compressor and condenser coils might overheat as they strain to cool the fridge. In fact, the same also applies if you have too little food in the fridge: the cold items in the fridge help cool down the rest of the space, so if there are no cold bodies, the motor also has to work harder.
2. Putting warm or hot food straight into the fridge: If you put food straight into the fridge, before it’s had the chance to cool down, the temperature inside the fridge will increase. That is a bad thing, because it not only means the motor will have to work harder to bring the temperature down again, but other food in the fridge may get warm enough to get spoiled.
3. Putting the fridge too close to a wall: Again, this prevents your fridge from working correctly by means of disrupting the airflow. Without good airflow, your fridge may not be able to get warm air out, which means it will take too long to get down to the right temperature, and also that the motor will be under more strain.