My refrigerator was leaking and I looked up how to fix it and learned that water from somewhere inside the freezer overflows into this shallow pool in the freezer and freezes there and when that area is full, it then leaks out onto the floor, where I was seeing it. I needed to break up the ice in the bottom of the freezer so that the water could again have room to pool at the bottom of the freezer and not leak out onto the floor.
This doesn’t stop the root cause of the leaking but it stops there being water on the floor, which I saw as the main problem. There were further steps that I could have taken to address the root cause but it involved moving the fridge and taking things apart and I didn’t feel it was worth it.
You might think that I treated only the symptom of the problem and not the problem itself. But I think that for me the symptom was the main problem. Sure, you don’t want to use a Band-Aid when you need a splint, but don’t be afraid to use a Band-Aid when you need a Band-Aid. Band-Aids were invented for a reason.
Fix the problem quickly and move on.