Dear Reverend,
My wife has become obsessed with arranging the contents of our refrigerator. Whenever I take anything out of it, it seems like she's right behind me to make sure it gets put back correctly. I thought she was just on one of her usual organizing kicks, but the other day I noticed a flower in a vase inside the fridge. What the hell is going on here?
Ken Moore (man, 38)
Dear Ken Moore,
I'm going to hazard a guess that your wife spends some time watching Instagram reels and TikTok videos. The flower in the vase is a telltale sign that she's fallen victim to the hard-to-believe-it's-true trend of fridgescaping.
It's the act of arranging and styling the inside of your refrigerator like you would any other part of your home. Although the idea has gained popularity on social media as of late, the term was coined back in 2011 in a blog post by a retired design consultant named Kathy Perdue. She wrote about the joys of tidying up her fridge to make it look good and used a play on the word "tablescaping." It took a while to catch on, but here we are.
Fridgescaping can entail anything from using vintage containers and baskets to store your leftovers and produce to adorning the inside of your fridge with seasonal decorations. One TikTok user, Lynzi Judish, has taken it so far as to create themed fridgescapes based on The Hobbit and "Bridgerton" — or "Fridgerton."
The aesthetic appeal of seeing a well-organized fridge every time you open the door can give your brain a blast of the happy chemical dopamine. And who doesn't love that? Other benefits include producing less food waste and making cooking more exciting; it's also a fairly simple creative outlet. As long as the food is stored safely, there's really no harm.
You may as well join in the fun. Perhaps sometime when your wife isn't looking, you could add a little Halloween décor to a crisper drawer.
Good luck and God bless,
The Reverend