Fridgescapes and the Aesthetic Arms Race of Kitchens.
People are decorating the inside of their fridge and it's making me insane.
Welcome to Tomato House. Here, I explore my love of food, the meals I cook, and how food touches all our lives. I am a home cook, taught by my parents, friends, and many failed meals. I invite you to share my meals and my thoughts, even if you can’t share my table. This is a free publication, but please subscribe to receive the latest essay in your inbox. I’d love to hear your thoughts too, so please leave a comment.
With gratitude.
The kitchen is my favorite room in the house. I spend a lot of time there and think of it as mostly mine, even though my husband also cooks many meals. He may make breakfast every day, but he is still technically a visitor.
I want my kitchen to be efficient and useful. Yes, I’d love a more aesthetic backsplash and a gorgeous range hood. (Hell, I’d opt for a genuine range hood no matter how ugly as opposed to the shitty fan I currently have.) What I love about kitchens is that they can absolutely be beautiful spaces, but they are first functional ones.
My parents remodeled their home when I was young, and at the center of their design was the kitchen. This decision reflected the reality that the kitchen was the center of our lives. Food was a big deal in our house—nightly dinners, regularly entertaining, two athletic children who would literally never stop eating - sorry, Mom. Food brought everything together. So, they designed the home to allow rooms to flow into the large kitchen, featuring a spacious island that provided space for people to gather and food to be prepared. It was a beautiful space with warm cabinets and granite slabs, but no matter how appealing it looked, nothing trumped the design’s true purpose of facilitating memorable meals.
Because I have this love of kitchens, I watch far too many TV shows, and TikToks, and Instagram reels about people’s kitchens. I can’t help but be curious as to how other people organize and decorate my favorite room. After endless hours of watching kitchen reveals, I have developed a specific talent. Within a moment of watching, I can tell if the owner of the kitchen actually cooks or not. It’s not a useful talent, but I always know. There are subtle clues, where certain decision reflect the rooms’s true function: Work or Show. One might think this would be a straightforward assessment. It would be logical to assume a larger, more equipped kitchen signified a person or family more focused on cooking, but that’s not usually the case. I swear the ostentatiousness of a kitchen is more often directly inverse to the amount of cookery that occurs.
I watched actress Sofia Vergara give a tour of her home and her kitchen. She has an insanely expensive range, and huge counters, and a large island, and a huge double fridge, and…and…and…. She has everything possible in that kitchen, but she then sheepishly admitted that she doesn’t cook and has never used the range. Yeah, Sophia, we can tell.
Kitchens have long been status symbols, but there is a sort of aesthetic arms race in kitchens these days. Big pantries aren’t good enough; they must also be merchandised like the inside of a retail store. Khloe Kardashian has a pantry that basically is a product placement set. With labels of each food package properly showcased in her plastic organizers. Or the TV show, The Home Edit, which has convinced us all that decanting is not just for wine. Nearly every pantry staple can be taken from its original packaging and transferred to a more aesthetically pleasing container. (I hate to admit it, but I do this to a certain degree. Flour just looks nicer and is easier to scoop out of a big jar than a flimsy bag.)
While silly pantries and excessive organizing are worthy of teasing, there is an even more unhinged level of kitchen decoration - the Fridgescape.
Similar to the word Hellscape, Fridgescapes are cold, barren wastelands that offer little hope for humanity. Fridgescapes don’t try to organize the interior of the refrigerator in a useful and beautiful way. To fridgescape is to dismiss usefulness altogether and assert the supremacy of aesthetics. Fridgescapes don’t organize refrigerators’ interiors; they decorate them.
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These videos take a familiar format. The fridge space is cleared and washed. The creator chooses a particular “Theme” or “Vibe” that will be reflected. Then the fridge is restocked, but in addition to foodstuffs, useless decorative items are included and featured more prominently than anything resembling the ingredients for a weeknight meal. A portrait of Mr. Darcy. A bouquet of flowers. Ribbon dangling ever quite so. Then a basket of fruit is added. Maybe a wedge of cheese perfectly wrapped in parchment. Milk poured into a vintage bottle.
Again, it’s clear that no cooking and likely, very little eating is happening out of this fridge. Not least of which, portraits of fictional characters and other decorative items take up half the fridge space. What a luxury to waste an inch of fridge space to anything other than keeping a family alive. But here’s my thing. I have no problem with people being extra when it comes to things that bring them joy, and even their kitchens. In the previously described dream kitchen of my parents, there were THREE sinks - insane, I know. One of these sinks was explicitly dedicated to pasta - even more extra. The pasta sink had two vessels: one was a standard sink, and the other was a heated vessel designed to hold a pasta colander, which would boil water in minutes and drain at the push of a button. It was like a pasta pot built into the sink. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. But my family ate pounds of pasta a week, so I get why my parents thought it cool to install. So while we did use this sink several times a week, it’s not like we were struggling to make riggatoni beforehand. But whatever, this gadget brought them joy and was a neat addition to their dream kitchen.
So, yes, people are allowed and should do things if they bring them joy. But here’s my thing. I don’t think the overly merchandised pantries, and ESPECIALLY the fridgescapes are bringing anyone joy. Mostly, it’s clear that fridgescapes are fake Instagram content. They aren’t the least bit authentic. And I‘m sure most viewers understand that they are watching a fiction. People will watch someone decorate the inside of their refrigerator in a sort of fantasy performance. A performance of what, though? Does this fantasy represent an ideal kitchen? Would life be more glamorous if my fridge were prettier inside?
Performative kitchens aren’t new. Sophia Vergara has a stove that’s never been used. But there is something about the organization/fridgescape videos that irks me. These just-for-show types of organization only work when you are divorced from actually preparing your own food.
Pantries that are too orderly show that a person isn’t working with variable ingredients. A perfectly arranged bowl of fruit doesn’t look perfectly arranged once you start grabbing the fruit to eat. Fridges that have enough space to include decor don’t have enough space for a week’s worth of groceries. Even the most regimented meal planner has to accommodate pasta one day, potatoes the next, a lasagna on a Thursday, and something else to carry the weekend. It’s chaotic. It’s not robotic. It constantly changes. But that’s just food. That’s how it goes.
What bothers me isn’t the fantasy of the fridgescape. That’s the fun part. What bothers me is the implication that a well-stocked fridge should be pleasing to the eye. FUCK THAT. A well-stocked fridge is, at best, holding it together at the seams, just like the cook sourcing from it. When you look at the home fridge and pantry of professional chefs/cooks, it's a hodgepodge of deli containers, Cambros, and random condiments.
On any given day, three to nine meals are made in my home. They range from simple fruit and cheese plates to breakfast tacos to involved dinners. Each of which has a protein and a product that requires different storage conditions. So, how is that all supposed to look nice, and where am I supposed to find room for a framed portrait?
I know that these ostentatious displays of prettiness for social media are supposed to create a glamorous fantasy for the viewer and maybe also for the creator. But, there is a much more glamorous option: Cook and eat delicious food!
A gorgeous dinner party beats a pleasing refrigerator interior. Grabbing what you can find in the pantry and whipping together an elegant meal is far more whimsical and romantic than having a well-merchandised container of single-serving chip bags. If we want a more romantic and glamorous life, we will not find it in a vapid presentation of pantries and fridgescapes. The glamour lies in the living and the sharing.
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