The refrigerator: Rethinking the way we store our food.

My refrigerator before it's overhaul. One embarrassing, jumbled mess of food.

About a year ago, I was wrapping up a season of unemployment. It had been a long and lonely winter in which I struggled to find a place of significance for myself outside of the office. Eventually, I jumped off the sofa and dove into my kitchen, exploring avenues of culinary and domestic wonder. Looking back, I miss those long afternoons of bread baking, punching and kneading dough between sending out resumes and cover letters. I remember one day when I was feeling particularly uninspired. What should I cook for dinner? I opened the refrigerator and the jumbled mess in front of me only made me want to shut the door and call for takeout. I couldn’t see everything that I had in there! It was time to take inventory. After pulling a forgotten cucumber out of the bottom of the veggie drawer, overly aged cheese out of the cheese drawer, and not-so-fresh herbs I didn’t even know I had out of the back of the fridge, I knew I needed to change this wasteful way of shoving food wherever it fit. It donned on me that day that in the art of cooking the medium from which I draw my creativity should inspire and encourage the art. As a painter’s palette shows the painter the colors available to them and helps the artist draw from those colors to create new colors, so the refrigerator can be an impetus for displaying ingredients and inspiring the cook to draw from those ingredients and create a meal! The result was a display of groceries that were fun to look at. Parsley was no longer tossed in a plastic bag, but beautifully displayed in a small vase of water. Eggs came out of the carton and were arranged in a basket. My refrigerator was now an art installation that inspired me to cook! I’ll admit, I had a quiet suspicion that I had officially gone crazy, but a year later I find I am not alone.

J. Morgan Puetts fridge at Mildreds Lane (c) Phil Mansfield of Food & Wine Magazine

In the March 2011 issue of Food & Wine Magazine there was a short feature on artist J. Morgan Puett. You can read the article here. Puett runs an artists’ retreat out of her home at Mildred’s Lane in rural Pennsylvania where she teaches and practices what she calls “creative domesticating.” Visiting artists explore their creativity in a community kitchen, where they are asked to arrange their groceries aesthetically in the refrigerator! Puett explains, “my goal is to make people rethink the way we live. Art can be found in a gallery or a kitchen.”

When I first explored the creative display in my refrigerator, it felt silly, but I was no longer embarrassed by what was behind that door. More so now, even though I am not spending the hours I’d like to in the kitchen during this season of my life, the refrigerator provides a blank canvas for me to display raw material, so when I do get home, I can quickly throw a few beautiful ingredients together for a wholesome meal. And I no longer get phone calls from my husband saying, what do we have in the fridge? It’s all there in plain sight.

My refrigerator -- post-overhaul.