Let’s talk about the most widely used appliance worldwide: refrigerators. Big, small, drawers, one door, French doors, fridge on top, fridge on bottom… They come in so many versions, and every single home has one!

Over the years I have come to have an intimate relationship with mine, and I absolutely feel possessive over it. To say I am in a relationship with my refrigerator might seem like a stretch, but hear me out. It’s always there for me, will happily accept whatever I put in, never talks back, and occasionally provides the exact comfort food and energy boost required to get through the busy days. It’s opened and closed a hundred times a day, has to store not just the produce and proteins I hope to cook with for dinner (that, spoiler alert, comes daily!!), but also has to store all the condiments I may need to eat dinner with, the leftovers of dinners and Shabbos past, all the milk varieties (sigh for the good ol’ days when milk variety just meant skim or whole), drinks (cans, bottles, big and small), and all the dairy (all the cheese and 400 yogurts in every shape, flavor, and size), while simultaneously staying organized enough that someone who opens it can actually locate what they need.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Ha ha, Danielle, your teenage boys will never be able to find the ketchup. Even if there was a neon sign that read “ketchup” with an arrow pointing to it, they would still need you to locate it for them. And to that I say, fine. You’re right. So really when I say “someone” needs to locate something in the fridge, I mean “me.”

I need to able to use my fridge space well enough to know what I have and use it before it expires. It’s a constant race against the clock.

Refrigerator games.

It’s basically like the Olympic sport of motherhood.

Only it’s way more involved than just swimming a few laps across a pool. We need to successfully stock, organize, maintain, and use its contents efficiently before that expiration date hits. Oh, and also, have on hand everything we need to appease the “I’m staaaaaarving” requests of family members who in absolutely no way are actually starving.

And so, my trusty refrigerator companion, which is set up to help me in all the loyal ways a teammate does, must be loved and tended to in order to reach its potential.

Where to Put It All

Let’s start at the very beginning: An empty fridge.

A truly beautiful sight that I relish at the end of a very long month of Pesach cleaning. Almost to the point that I have to remind myself that the shopping and filling of it is necessary and the forthcoming chaos is truly a blessing.

No matter what kind of refrigerator you are operating with, they all have shelves and a door. Some come with more or less shelves and some have drawers. Those are bonuses.

Before you put a single thing into your fridge, it’s important to understand the cooling zones and how to assign a location to what you put in it so that you can maximize the benefits of the refrigerator.

Heat rises. We all know that. That means that the higher the shelf, the less cool it will be. This makes the top shelf of your fridge ideal for items that need to be cool but will not go bad quickly. That means drinks on top, maybe overflow produce that doesn’t fit in your produce drawer (if you have one), and bread, wraps, and the like.

Oh Danielle, you forgot condiments. They can go there too! Nope! They can’t. And I’ll tell you why.

Condiments, specifically bought condiments, are made to last. They usually have pretty long expiration dates and are made of enough processed ingredients that they can withstand a lot. This makes them the perfect candidate for the door shelves!

As far as fridge space goes, the door is the least secure area of all. Being that it’s opened and closed all day, it takes the longest time to recalibrate itself temperature wise, and although keeping all your milk on the door seems ideal in terms of access, nothing will spoil your milk faster than the up-and-down temperatures of the door shelves.

So condiments, I love you a lot, but you’re going to the door.

Now you have about two to three shelves left on a standard fridge and maybe one or two drawers. The drawers are usually temperature controlled and ideal for produce or dairy. If your refrigerator assigns a category to the drawer, use it for that. It’s literally telling you what its superpower is. To use it for something else would just make it very sad, and we don’t want any sad fridges around here!