From Get Ready With Me videos to the What’s-In-My-Bag Reels, there exists online an entire behind-the-scenes genre of content that feeds our desire to know what is happening in the obscure corners of other peoples’ lives. The latest of these is fridgescaping, a term coined by blogger Kathy Perdue in 2011 to describe the food organization practice that blends the practical with the aesthetic.
Lynzi Judish, aka @LynziLiving, the Hudson Valley, New York-based content creator behind the current TikTok fervor around fridgescaping, designs some of the most spectacular fridges on the internet, built around pop culture themes like Practical Magic, Outlander, and her most viral, Bridgerton. After watching refrigerator organizing videos online for a few months, the home decor enthusiast decided to post her first fridgescaping video showcasing her over-the-top style in May. “After all,” Judish says, “You decorate your home, why not your fridge?”
But while Judish’s fridgescapes have inspired scores of people to organize, decorate, and share their own fridges, with themed fridgescapes celebrating Mexican culture and cowboys, among others, her posts are also littered with comments like, “Some people have too much time on their hands” and “WHY IS THERE A RANDOM PHOTO FRAME IN THE FRIDGE???? ”
The backlash is ongoing. An antiques dealer recently made his own version of a fridgescaping video, during which he adds increasingly bizarre items including a Barbie holding loose cheese sticks, a glass mannequin head draped with lunch meat, and an ashtray to an empty fridge while narrating with a mocking tone. Shabaz Ali, a wildly popular content creator and author of the book I’m Rich You’re Poor: How to Give Social Media a Reality Check who uses comedy to take down other creators online, stitched Judish’s “Fridgerton” reel with his own voiceover explaining that the average user could never achieve such aesthetics and only “strive to be this level of unemployed.”
The comments of these videos are full of anti-fridgescaping sympathizers. And far louder than the online commenters are the media headlines that call fridgescaping “atrocious,” “wacky,” and “bizarre,” and throw in phrases such as “bad for your health” without context.
While this backlash would suggest that fridgescaping is a scourge, identifying what the problem is, exactly, is more difficult. Is there really anything wrong with wanting to beautify the inside of your refrigerator?
People have long used fridges for self-expression, from curating their inner contents to decorating their exteriors with magnets. The fridgescaping trend is a continuation of that idea, made performative as people document their creations for Instagram. And while the element of performance inherent to fridgescaping as a hobby does invite added scrutiny, to some extent, and to a certain class of people, the fridge has always existed as something to be shown off.
By the 1950s, just about every household in America had its own refrigerator. Attempting to appeal directly to the American housewife, midcentury appliance companies used aesthetic language to sell their refrigerators as “beauties” and “a finer way of living.” Early General Electric “Monitor-Top” models were so chic they were intentionally used in numerous 1930s films as a part of kitchen sets. While white was the original “It” color, companies rolled out refrigerators in turquoise, pink, chrome, avocado green, and black to keep up with consumer trends.
“From the early days of advertising, fridges have been depicted with their doors open, shelves and doors full, the cornucopia of food inside representative of American abundance and its promise to every consumer citizen,” says food scholar and professor at the University of Tulsa, Emily Contois.
In the 1950s, Frigidaire started selling its color appliances at no extra charge, including a “radiantly new” bubblegum pink “Sheer Look” model with interchangeable storage containers and moveable shelves. A 1963 Frigidaire ad features a family of four posing for a group portrait including their “big, beautiful” baby blue refrigerator claiming the appliance is both “an American tradition” as well as “fashion-fresh and full of features.” The International Harvester Decorator Refrigerator advertised itself as a customizable model that consumers could change to match their kitchen with only “7 minutes and 1 ¾ yards of fabric.” (A similar recent DIY trend uses wallpaper instead of fabric.)
Judish’s fridge designs aren’t unlike the aspirational fridge storage guides of the 1950s and ’60s. Her themes, an idea that came to her when someone commented on her Regency-era-esque style, dubbing her design “Fridgerton,” put Judish’s fridges on another level compared to those who use more standard organizing tools like clear plastic bins and Pyrex containers, and more closely aligned with the customized and maximalist refrigerators of the past.
Following her recent Outlander-themed fridge, Judish created a Hobbit-inspired fridgescape, complete with doilies, moss, and mushroom-shaped jars. Judish says she’s also planning a Charles Dickens Christmas fridge, drawing on her love of classic literature. Judish’s themes introduce something witchy and whimsical to what has become one of the most utilitarian parts of the home. That alone — creating beauty in the mundane — should be enough justification for fridgescaping.
“I hope that people find it achievable and that it brings them joy,” Judish says of the trend she kicked off. “I hope people see that this is not another ridiculous standard we should set for women.”
Judish’s concerns about the gendered reading of fridgescaping are valid, especially on the heels of other problematic social media lifestyle trends (see: Trad Wives). While decorating the inside of a refrigerator and assuming domestic gender roles under the pretenses of a patriarchal determination produce very different types of content, they both fall into the same trap that was set up for women long ago. In short: Women can’t have it both ways. It’s fine if they’re trapped in the kitchen, but not if they have the gall to try to capitalize upon the skills and knowledge they’ve gained there. Doing so has historically invited ridicule or dismissal, and the largely male criticism of fridgescaping is no different.
Take, for example, a post from an anonymous Reddit user in the AITA (Am I The Asshole) subreddit in which the poster describes telling his wife that he hated her fridgescaping and then becomes concerned when she became distant and “weird intimacy-wise.” According to the user, the fridgescaping didn’t pose a huge issue for him because he doesn’t “have to use the fridge much anyways” and doesn’t “cook a lot.” He then elaborates how he finds it “unnecessary to maintain such an organized fridge,” further highlighting the fact that he likely doesn’t even think about how his meals get to the dinner table, let alone the hours of invisible labor that go into food purchasing, preparation, and storage.
This post embodies the way the internet is keen to take down something that has the lowest possible stakes. Not only is fridgescaping not harmful, it’s actually enjoyable, and thus beneficial, for people who practice it — Judish says “refrigerators were stressful” before she took up the hobby — and yet it invites vitriolic criticism from a big chunk of the audience consuming it. The passionate reactions to fridgescaping prove that the fridge door swings both ways: There is no food, no recipe, no culinary action a woman can take that won’t be met with a mix of support and scorn.
KC Hysmith is a writer, scholar, and recipe developer whose work has appeared in Food52, The Kitchn, and The Boston Globe. She is the historical editor for When Southern Women Cook (America’s Test Kitchen) and the author of the Substack newsletter Penknife.
Stephanie Ganz is a writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in BUST, Bon Appétit, The Kitchn, and Epicurious. She’s the author of the Substack newsletter But Wait, There’s More.