What Is Fridgescaping? And Why Is It So Divisive?

It’s TikTok, of course, that’s popularised this—but, like the lion’s share of trends unleashed by the Discover page (girl dinner, a googolplex of -cores), fridgescaping actually predates Nyquil chicken. Conventional wisdom (or at least Architectural Digest) has it that interior designer Kathy Sue Perdue first deployed the term on her Blogspot in a fetching Verdana font back in 2011. (Kathy Sue, like Didion, was once a resident of Brentwood, but one imagines the similarities end there.) Purdue’s attempts at fridgescaping, however, cleaved much more closely to “basic kitchen organization” (put things… in containers) than the equivalent of a Sand Mandala made of deli meats. By that standard, Martha Stewart was espousing the merits of fridgescaping before she’d even seen the inside of Alderson Federal Prison Camp.

So why, exactly, is fridgescaping—truly the most grating neologism since “phygital”—trending now? Especially since the likes of über-scaper Lynzi Judish—who never met a woodland tchotchke she didn’t like—have already been doing it for months (a geological age in TikTok terms). That would be down to Reddit user Icy-Shelter9897, who posted in the platform’s Am I the A**hole thread explaining that his wife is a recent convert to the SubZero cult, and it’s put his sex life on ice: “She started decorating our fridge and it was really getting on my nerves, for example she put flowers in the fridge, in vases, in front of food so you have to move things just to get to the food. She put all our food in fancy baskets, jars, and similar things. I know it sounds absurd [editor’s note: it does] but if you just search up ‘fridgescaping’ you’ll see what I’m talking about.” Eventually, he hangrily explained that he found “the hobby stupid”, and since then, his partner’s “been acting very distant towards me and just hasn’t been herself, and has been weird intimacy-wise.”

Reddit is predictably divided about whether or not Icy-Shelter is, in fact, the a**hole. To be fair to the fridgescapers of this world, humanity has always had the impulse to decorate the functional (think of the Lascaux caves, or the vajazzling phenomenon). What’s grating about fridgescaping isn’t so much the act itself (although a little self-reflection while placing an honest-to-God bell jar next to your Babybels wouldn’t go amiss): it’s the fact that the conspicuous posting of conspicuous consumption now extends to our very salad crispers (which, in the name of #aesthetics, contain lace gloves rather than lettuce, Ton paraphernalia rather than tomatoes). I’m no marriage counselor, Icy-Shelter, but I, for one, don’t think you have anything to apologize for. And if this all leads you to the brink of divorce? There’s always Hawaii.