Green Acre: How Green Was My Fridge

The refrigerator of dreams. / Photo on front from iStock.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

I MUST SAY, the interior of the fridge is lovely. I must also say, this is not my fridge.

Front and center on a shelf, radishes share a wooden bowl with curly-leaf lettuce. Blueberries nestle in a crystal goblet. A silvery basket holds near-black cherries—you can see the sweetness. Behind them, the tops of scallions, in a raffia-wrapped vase, tickle the underside of the shelf above, the greens perfectly clipped so they’re precisely the same height. In the far back are bowls of apples and limes.

That shelf above has bowls of cherry tomatoes and peppers and glass jars of what looks like milk, maybe cream, maybe both. Anchoring this tableau is a small vase of orange and yellow zinnias poked with purple veronica (I think).

That little vase gave me the excuse for writing about fridgescaping in a gardening column.

Fridgescaping? It’s the “art of decorating the fridge’s interior,” said Lia Picard in last Sunday’s New York Times.  

The refrigerator of reality, at least mine. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

Ma! says Baby. This has been a thing for years, it’s all over Instagram and TikTok. Indeed. At The List, they say: #FridgeTour has more than 50 million views on TikTok, #FridgeOrganization has almost 2 billion views, and #FridgeDecor has more than 280,000 views, as social media users show off their unique fridge aesthetics.

Fridgescaping, I laugh. Where have I been? Maybe it’s a Trad Wife thing I’ve conveniently overlooked . . .

Artist Julianne Brown spent four hours creating her frosty masterpiece. Fridgescaping, said Picard, made the fridge—and especially the produce within it—more accessible to her three young children.

Three young children. Let us pause for a moment to consider . . . Where were they when Mummy was trimming the scallions? 

With an empty nest, I have no excuse for not creating posies to set beside the cottage cheese, decanting the French Onion Philly Cream Cheese (brand new in supermarkets and a ringer for Boursin) into a more suitable container, repurposing one of my one-of crystal goblets for radishes, or decanting the orange juice into a silvery jug.

Some people add framed photos of loved ones, or pets, Picard noted. Ah, yes, let’s add a photo of my grand-dog, Tallulah, on a pile of carrots, her favorite. 

This is not my fridge.

Yesterday, returning from the market, I was smooshing the celery, broccoli, and zucchini into the already overloaded vegetable bin, pushing leftovers and such to the rear, where they’ll no doubt molder, to make way for chicken and ribs. A hunk of watermelon just made it into the bottom drawer. Oops, that was supposed to be for last night’s dinner.

Today, I placed a cluster of alstroemeria lilies onto a shelf, just to see. Standing back, I noticed it gave the assemblage a certain air . . . as if the complete disorganization were deliberate, even fanciful. Look at all of that color! Do I get a little taste, a hint, of Caravaggio in the overripe bananas?  

And it was so easy! Really!