Prayer For A New Fridge

Can one simple online purchase absolve our sins?

Online shopping for a refrigerator and boy do they look good inside. Who packed these things? Now there’s a job, I think to myself. Then it occurs to me; I have that job already, in our fridge, all the time.

I could be doing it much better, too.

For starters, the colors aren’t coordinated at all. Categories are all over the place; meat next to dairy, sauces beside everything. Half-open containers. Poor wrapping. If we were a commercial kitchen, the County would have shut us down years ago.

How do I introduce that casual stacking of Tupperwares I’m seeing online? Keep everything so fresh, so clean? Wiped down. No secrets. No regrets. No shame.

A couple of years ago my son became interested in TikTok organizing videos. We let him loose on the fridge a few times and it was fantastic. He stood in there, barely able to reach all the shelves, sorting it out brilliantly. Long after the warning beep for the door being open too long had given up, he was still sorting.

I would do it more often, but like a lot of things online, the fridges share no relation to reality. Real fridges are like life; messy.

Real fridges don’t merely demonstrate their ample storage space. They rage against it, in a series of conflicting, sometimes angry moods. Nor do they showcase perfectly balanced diets. They don’t speak to a hopeful future either, but instead, remind you of your checkered past.

Our fridge – like yours, I’m guessing – is a hodgepodge of a tale. The eternal hope of leftovers dies very hard and tests me daily. There’s inevitably a salad bag barely holding on; always just too large for the group, never used again in time, dirty water pooling in the corners. Jars of forgotten origin camp like squatters on crowded shelves. Vegetables the kids rejected, but someone bought again anyway, laugh silently. Meats I should have thought to cook or freeze sooner dare me to smell them.

It’s hard to look in there most days. But you have to.

The freezer, too. How could I forget the freezer? What a funny little graveyard our freezer is. Handy for ice, ice cream and tater tots, but mostly like a rented storage unit, for all the big food decisions we’re not quite ready to make. Waiting in vain for the day when I’ll have the guts to admit defeat or the patience to thaw something before cooking it.

But this new fridge will be different. A fresh start. A new dawn, one where we invest in those large bottles of healthy looking juice and convenient sized yogurts. Stack the transparent drawers carefully with rainbows of fruit and vegetables. Date the leftovers. Keep the shelves clean, and stocked only with containers of appropriate dimensions.

Yes! Buying something new online will once again solve all my earthly problems.

Click.