How can I avoid overflowing the water pan while defrosting my fridge?
Our fridge's auto defrost when out and we had a solid chunk of thick ice that we had to manually defrost before the repair man could do anything, he suggested we put quite a few towels in the freezer as well as the fridge  part. it soaked up pretty much all the water from the melted ice and we got our fridge fixed a couple days later. maybe put some towels in the fridge and under your pan. it'll make LESS of a mess anyways ;). Hope this helps, good luck.