Considering the ‘refrigerator as art installation’ lifestyle? Heed these warnings
Clear acrylic bins are having a moment. And by moment, I mean they’re now ubiquitous in the home organization arena, specifically in regard to corralling clutter in your refrigerator. This annoys me for a variety of reasons.
The fact that I’ve reached the stage in my life where an acrylic bin has the power to irritate me is something I don’t really want to examine too deeply. One day you’re losing your mind over the elementary school drop off line, then you blink and you’re an empty-nester with bin rage.
That said, my rage is justified because I know with absolute certainty that the clear acrylic bin is not the answer to anyone’s refrigerator organizational prayers.
The reason I can tackle the topic of bins with such gusto is because I, myself, fell prey to the refrigerator binning trend. And now as a woman who’s “bin there and done that” I feel compelled to share my truth.
Certainly, seeing a refrigerator on social media filled with clear bins showcasing a bounty of fruits and vegetables and a collection of condiments is extremely pleasing to the eye. Most especially when everything is grouped by color, creating an artistic vista of harmony whenever you open your fridge.
But what no one tells, not so much as a whisper, is that the bins are deceivers. This is because the problem with the entire inventory of your refrigerator being imprisoned in clear bins is that it makes your life harder, not easier.
No longer can you have the unfettered joy of reaching in your refrigerator and quickly grabbing an apple. Now you have to remove the bin, put it on the kitchen counter and take out the apple and then put the bin back in the fridge.
This creates another problem because when you bin your fridge you’ve basically created a game of Tetris.
Tetris, just in case you’ve never played it, is a puzzle video game where you move different shaped pieces around until you get a headache and quit playing. Refrigerator Tetris is almost the same thing, as you have to maneuver your bins around every time you want to free any food from your fridge.
Oh, and don’t believe for a second any of the claims that bins will help you find items in your refrigerator. I could have every single item in my fridge connected to a GPS tracking device and my family still wouldn’t be able to find the mayo. Trust me when I say refrigerator blindness is real and apparently hereditary.
Then there’s the issue of sorting the contents of your refrigerator into bins. Cue the freak out if, say, all your cheeses won’t fit nicely into one bin (with the cheeses lined up according to color starting with a creamy white brie and ending with the orange-ish Gouda). With the bin system you can’t have one wayward block of extra sharp cheddar going rogue in your fridge.
Everything needs to be binned by category and it’s considered a bin fiasco and also a refrigerator aesthetic failure if you have random items hanging out in your fridge in, God forbid, Ziploc storage bags.
But the worst of the bin lifestyle is that no longer do you just have shelves and crisper drawers to keep clean. Now you have to scrub and shine your bins constantly so they remain pristine. Because one bin with a smudge has the power to ruin the “refrigerator as an art installation” lifestyle.
My clear bin fridge frenzy didn’t even last a month. I had to admit to myself that, alas, perhaps I’m an uncouth heathen who values eating the food in my refrigerator more than gazing at it.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com..