Are ‘carrots the new throw pillow?’ ‘Fridgescaping’ gains a following.
How did we get here? Blame a perfect storm of home-organization fever that peaked during COVID coupled with a turbulent world.
My fridge resembles a forest when neglected: overgrown veggies, fruits sprouting fuzz, a swampy aroma that may or may not be my son’s ancient yogurt packets.
But now I can take heart that a cluttered, verdant fridge is actually an aesthetic trend. It’s called “fridgescaping,” and it’s making home organizers and professional chefs cringe.
Fridgescapers — homemaking influencers who seem to grow and multiply on social media like Gatorade in a teen mom’s pantry — favor form over function. Their fridges resemble garden picnics, tea parties, enchanted woods, and the cover of bodice-ripping romance novels. Their shelves are festooned with needlepoint, candelabra, doilies, and occasionally food.
RosemaryFairy’s fridge resembles a hobbit’s lair, with flowers in vases, bowls of fluffy greens, untamed topiaries, and gold-framed portraits of woodsy scenes. House of Bishop props root veggies in translucent containers and tosses a bouquet of roses where mere mortals’ OJ might be. Then there’s Garden of Eve, whose meticulously stocked icebox houses a pyramid of lemons, a precisely angled tangle of impossibly orange carrots, and a framed photo of a feline.
How did we get here? Blame a perfect storm of home-organization fever that peaked during COVID coupled with a turbulent world. In times of stress or helplessness, it’s nice to feel a sense of mastery, somewhere.
“Fridgescapers are a very niche group of people, and it is 100 percent about control. It is fascinating to me. People feel better when they have control of their spaces,” said Emily St. Martin, who runs Dots & Stripes Organizing, a home organizing service in Newton.
Just one problem: Fridgescaping is also rather impractical. If you live in a home with multiple people, a cat portrait soon will be knocked aside for seltzer, and the bushy basket of overgrown vegetables inevitably will be thrust to the back of the fridge in favor of takeout bags and milk cartons.
“The irony of fridgescaping is that it’s not sustainable because everyone has to be bought into your vision. Think about it: If you have a family with three kids, and you put carrots in a vase, are you committed to doing it long term?” St. Martin asked.
In the name of journalistic integrity, I attempted to scape my own fridge for one misguided afternoon. I lovingly placed apples in a cheerful bowl; artfully arranged a bunch of carrots in one corner; and stacked my Fage yogurt tubs in a hopeful pyramid. I also dimmed the overhead fridge light for maximum ambience. This scene lasted for approximately two hours, until my teen returned from basketball, threw his water bottle into the fridge sideways, and knocked over my yogurt like candlepins at a bowling alley.
“The irony of all this is, in organizing, we talk about calm, peaceful spaces. When I have delved into fridgescaping, some of these fridges are beautiful — but they’re actually more crowded,” St. Martin said. And more stressful.
Marc Sheehan, the chef-owner of Canton’s Northern Spy whose success depends upon an organized fridge, is perplexed by the trend.
“I saw one fridgescape with multiple ceramic pitchers in the front of a refrigerator. One had begonias in it, and one had carrots with no tops, as if they were planted. It is illogical and, at least to me, unattractive,” Sheehan said.
And, perhaps, unsanitary. Is a ceramic jug going to prolong the life of your produce? Is it really wise to store vegetables next to frost-bitten knickknacks?
“Honestly, you should keep your food at its maximum level of freshness and safety. If you want to cool something properly or store something, it should be sealed; greens or herbs shouldn’t get exposed to too much air and become limp and flimsy,” he said.
Sheehan recommended investing in cheap pint and quart containers from the decidedly untrendy Ocean State Job Lot, labeled with blue 3M painter’s tape. These receptacles are ideal for liquids, grains, and leftovers.
“To me, there’s something truly beautiful about looking at properly stacked containers, though [it] might be brutalist fridgescaping architecture and not the impressionist pieces we’re seeing,” he said.
RosemaryFairy, who has drawn a 341,000-person-plus TikTok following for her forage-fridge chic, posts sentiments like “I wish this peace for the world!” as she pans across her rustic shelves.
Not everyone agrees.
“The thought of fridgescaping and wasting all that valuable real estate makes me itch,” said chef Charlie Foster, who is in charge of the kitchen at the very woodsy, very verdant Woods Hill Table in the Seaport and in Concord. “From a craftsman’s perspective, your job as a chef is to eliminate variables” — such as chancing that a key ingredient lurks behind a needlepoint display.
For home fridges, Foster endorses the practice of knolling, which is arranging objects at right angles, in parallel. He also recommends keeping in-use items toward the front with unopened items in the back for easy access.
“I prefer German engineering to sauvage [wild],” he said.
The bottom line: If you can maintain a fridgescape, go for it. But be forewarned.
While St. Martin, the home organizer, wondered whether “carrots are the new throw pillow,” she’s not convinced.
“You have to stick to the maintenance,” she said.
Kara Baskin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @kcbaskin.
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