“Food is one of the great organizing tools.” — Pete Seeger
I’ve always found organizing and food to be two of the more considerable challenges in my life because there is a particular skill set required to pull off feeding people in an organized way, and I don’t possess it.
However, the arrival of a new-to-me refrigerator to store extra drinks, food, and other perishables is the perfect opportunity to do a minor home edit on how I manage my pantry and groceries.
It’s made me realize there is a lot more to organizing food than just hauling home a sack of groceries from the store and tossing it in the cabinets.
One pass through TikTok or Facebook will show that putting away anything, from cosmetics and toiletries to snacks and canned goods, can be elevated to an art form.
Making your refrigerator “aesthetically pleasing” even has a name and hashtag; fridgescaping. It’s becoming the new path to online clout. Food storage is now being influenced by social media, and it’s getting weird.
Snacks must be color-coordinated in clear plastic bins that fit precisely on shelves. Get the milk and juice out of those cardboard cartons and flimsy plastic jugs. They need to be in slim glass pitchers with cute chalkboard labels that say “Milk” and “OJ” in case anyone gets confused and thinks milk is orange and fruit juice is white.
The fridge has to be sparkling clean at all times, with no gooey meat drippings or foil-covered plates. You can’t possibly have plastic containers with blue tops right next to glass containers with red tops; that could lead to all-out anarchy.
All the half-empty jars of salad dressing and condiments need to be in squeeze bottles, also artfully arranged with cutesy labels.
All I needed was a bit of extra space for a few cold beers and some soda, and now I’m haunting Pinterest for creative ways to organize fruit and veggies.
I stood in Target for fifteen minutes trying to decide which multi-sectioned covered dish would work best, and finally, I gave up. Since when do our fridges have to be oversized Bento boxes?
Along with the organizational issues, there’s also the question of food prep. Some people plan their meals for the whole week, cook all the food, and then store it in individual portions. Instead of the nightly wailing and gnashing of teeth over the age-old question of “what’s for dinner,” you just open the fridge and grab the BPA-free plastic tray that says “Tuesday” in silver Sharpie.
On any given Sunday afternoon, are you sure that on the following Wednesday, you’ll still want the salmon and green beans you prepped? What happens if you feel like picking up a pizza on the way home from work one night? Does the three day old fish in your fridge look at you accusingly, as if you didn’t honor its sacrifice?
I’m not ready for that level of planning.
For one thing, it eliminates that feeling of victory at 3 AM, when I’m feeling a little snacky, and I find half a sub sandwich from three nights ago. Also, milk in a Pottery Barn glass pitcher doesn’t offer the same satisfaction as guzzling moo juice from a cardboard container while you wash down a stale Oreo from your kid’s lunch box.
Perhaps people think they can avoid the temptation of take-out and midnight snacking if they know they have crisp apples and hearty salads ready to go, but it wouldn’t work that way for me.
If I want pizza, it means I’m cranky or impatient, and quinoa in a plastic container isn’t going to fix that. Thin crust, cheese, and pepperoni in a grease-spotted cardboard box will.
A good friend is going to help me figure out a way to make my new fridge a cool, fun space. She’s an excellent cook and has a ton of recipes for homemade meals and treats, but when I asked her if I could freeze a Shake and Bake chicken drumstick, she said, “That’s not food; that’s chemical warfare.” This could be a tougher task than we think — stay tuned.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years, and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.