Organize your kitchen like a chef, not an influencer

If you’re a regular on TikTok or Instagram, you may feel your kitchen is under attack. It started with #CleanTok, wherein cleanliness influencers shared tips for sparkling stainless steel sinks and competed to have the most hygienic kitchen. Then, influencers got more ambitious with “decanting” videos documenting a method of pantry organization involving transferring foodstuffs from the grocery store packaging to clear containers in neat rows. Now it’s “fridgescaping.” This is roughly what it sounds like: The interiors of refrigerators are organized and decorated, with the most popular posts of the genre featuring fridges that look less like cold storage and more like a bohemian fairy garden. Milk goes in farmhouse pitchers, eggs line up ceramic trays, and butter hides under dishes shaped like animals. Berries, ever ubiquitous, are placed attractively in vintage bowls, raw vegetables stand at attention, and items that have no place in a fridge — bouquets of flowers, photos in frames, string lights — are given prominent placement. That the refrigerators are meticulously clean is a given, and they’re often new and large. [Media: https://www.tiktok.com/@lynziliving/video/7400918601911389470?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7366758941814851115] In a trend piece, the New York Times declared “[N]ot even the inside of your fridge is safe from decorating.” It reports on fridgescaping as a “creative outlet” for some and, according to one influencer, a means to make food “more accessible” to her three young children. Another tells the Times that spending three hours on a forest-themed fridge is worth it because she is “more excited” to eat her produce. As someone with a cooking background — my father has been a chef for 35 years, my mother’s side of the family runs a spice business, and I grew up running around commercial kitchens and worked for a year as a line cook, in addition to writing a book on spices — I find myself deeply disturbed by fridgescaping. It is, I believe, the culmination of a series of trends that serve to alienate people from food. It removes all the labor, the mess, the physicality, and the pleasure inherent in eating, and replaces it with public performance. There are better ways to organize a kitchen, techniques that can improve functionality and prioritize goals like reducing food waste — and, yes, that could even lead to eating more fruits and vegetables. The rise of fridgescaping Cooking at home for the majority of us not wealthy enough to outsource it requires an immense amount of time and labor: coming up with a meal plan, making a list, going to the store, shopping, unloading, chopping, sautéing, simmering, and doing the dishes after. This is out of reach for millions of Americans experiencing food insecurity, the many millions more living with low food security, or those who simply don’t have enough hours in the day. [Media: https://www.tiktok.com/@shabazsays/video/7384908970835594528] Given that reality, it’s hard to fathom that influencers are meticulously creating a Hobbit-inspired fridgescape and buying so much produce that their fridge looks like a Dutch Golden Age still life. It goes without saying that fridgescaping — and its pantry cousin, decanting — prioritizes displaying and arranging food, instead of preparing and eating it. That’s not to mention all the unnecessary aesthetic upkeep, like changing out the water of that bouquet. Imagine doing all that and also recording yourself doing it, then sitting down to edit the footage. That is to say: Fridgescaping is a scam of the classic keeping-up-with-the-Joneses variety for the TikTok age. In these clips, hours of labor are squeezed into 30 seconds of beautification, following the before-and-after formula so successful on social media. These videos suggest you too can have the beauty and bounty of a fridge decked out Bridgerton style if you purchase the additional storage and knickknacks. Conveniently, you can click a link and buy everything you see from the influencer’s online store, where they receive a cut. Plenty of rationalizations exist (the produce!) but they’re undercut when those same creators urge their followers to “shop my fridge!” “It’s very easy to connect any capitalist endeavor to food,” said Emily Contois, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa and co-editor of Food Instagram, “because it’s something we have to do to survive — but it’s also something we genuinely want to do because it’s pleasurable, and doing it with other people, eating it with other people, preparing it with other people can also bring such profound pleasure.” Add in the gendered expectations around food preparation and cleaning, and fridgescaping can be seen as yet another domestic task expected of women: to not only shop, cook, and clean the kitchen, but to make it all look beautiful, too. Your kitchen should be a space of purpose, not just aesthetics I no longer cook professionally, but as a regular working person who cooks daily in a well-functioning home kitchen with an average amount of storage space, I have good news: You don’t need to live a life of ample wealth and leisure to smartly organize your kitchen. There are free or very cheap ways to do it with function in mind, without totally sacrificing aesthetics (although you won’t be needing fairy lights anytime soon). I consulted with the chefs in my life — my dad Brian Moog, and my brother-in-law Justin Behlke — for their practical advice on making the best use of your own time, space, and labor — and, as an avid home cook, added some tried-and-true tips of my own. Make your produce last much longer You should store most fresh produce in the refrigerator to maximize lifespan and give space and air to anything that’s packed tightly together to help it stay good for longer — I guess you’d call that a kind of decanting. “You can look at how they’re storing produce in the store,” my dad said. “If they’re storing something in water, like asparagus, you can do that at home too.” In addition to freeing the asparagus from their rubber band, he cuts the bottom of the stems, like flowers, and puts them in half an inch of water in a deli container in the fridge, where they last up to 10 days. He also removes lettuces and pre-cut greens from bags and clamshells and places them in airtight containers with paper towels at the bottom and top. Raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are likewise placed in a single layer on a piece of paper towel in airtight containers. Heads of lettuce, kale, herbs, and scallions can be simply wrapped in dry paper towels to achieve similar results. For my dad and brother-in-law, paper towels are the secret weapon to keeping produce fresh. As fruits and lettuces spend time in the fridge, moisture leaks out, which condenses and leads to the foods going bad faster. You want paper towels to absorb that excess. “The amount of paper towels I use …” Justin said. “There are all sorts of specialty containers, but usually those specific things are marketing gimmicks.” (For those who want a reusable option, try plain cotton or linen napkins to achieve a similar keep-fresh effect.) So don’t be ashamed of paper towel use. “There’s a lot of value in paper towels,” Justin said. “There’s balance to keep in mind, but there’s a lot of practicality.” Flour is the only dry good he puts in a plastic container, with a lid that’s easy to get off and an opening wide enough to dip a measuring cup into — mostly because flour bags create a mess every time they’re opened. “Keeping yourself and the cooking area clean saves time,” he said. “It seems nominal but it adds up.” That’s the kind of practical consideration you should keep in mind as you’re making your own kitchen decisions. I also recommend putting brown sugar in an air-tight container. After years of gouging it, rock-hard, from the bag, I can pop off the lid and scoop soft, moist sugar. Keep perishables front and center Fridgescaping influencers talk a lot about how their methods help them keep track of their produce, but a few simpler methods achieve the same results. It’s true that “out of sight, out of mind” is a cursed reality when it comes to perishables in the fridge, so keep short shelf life items at the front. I don’t use the crisper drawers for fruits and veggies. I put condiments in one and, being a Wisconsinite, cheese in the other. I know certain produce lasts longer in the crisper drawers, but all that meant for me was produce languishing there for a few extra days because I’d forget about it. Similarly, if your household consumes meat, try putting it in a see-through plastic container at the front. This keeps it front of mind and cordons it off from other food. The real key to my family’s approach to reducing food waste is the use of a whiteboard on the fridge, where we note the meals we’ve bought ingredients for. Seeing those meals listed reminds us about the foods likely to go bad fastest, so we cook those first. We also keep a running shopping list on a second whiteboard. Whenever we’re low or out of something, we add it to the list, so by the time we’re going shopping we’re not trying to remember everything we need. You don’t need to buy expensive plastic “storage systems” You don’t need professional-grade equipment or specialty gadgets, but professional-grade storage is key. For a lot of chefs, this means deli containers and cambros. Delis are round plastic storage containers most commonly used in 32-ounce, 16-ounce, and 8-ounce sizes. They stack in the cupboard, saving room, but also when used in the fridge, freezer, or pantry, regardless of which size you’re using. They’re a staple in restaurant kitchens, and they’re cheap and sturdy. Cambros are larger containers made of thick, sturdy plastic with tough lids. A couple of these live on top of our fridge, and we pull them down to use as a mixing bowl, to make dough, and to cook big batches of food. The square cambros are ideal for storing large-batch leftovers, prepped ingredients (like chopped onions and carrots), and soups, they take up just as much room as a mixing bowl but because of their square shape they fit more efficiently and stack more readily. Use tape to label the food in the delis and cambros (no, you don’t need to cut it with scissors like they do on The Bear). Noting the date something was made can come in handy in both the short and long term. A “made on” date attached to leftovers containing meat, for example, is helpful when deciding whether to dig back in after a few days. And for items that won’t spoil, like syrups or caramel, it’s helpful when clearing out the fridge to realize which products have been occupying valuable real estate for six months without being used. [Image: A shelf in the author’s pantry. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/IMG_5775_f51367.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] For pantry organization, try recycling old containers or using what you have instead of buying new ones. For instance, I use my loaf tins for granola bars and baby crackers on a pantry shelf to make the packages more accessible. I don’t buy the idea that putting everything in clear plastic containers is helpful. I know how much cereal is left in the box every time I pour it into a bowl; I know how much mustard is left each time I squirt it out. When I notice them running low, I add them to the running grocery list. Kitchen organization is a process, not a one-off event My dad and Justin both say that organizing a kitchen is less an exercise in perfection and more about refining as you go along. “My biggest piece of advice is to remain conscious,” my dad told me. “I’ve set up a lot of kitchens, and I see the angst of it. People want to be able to move into a new space and put every item in the best place, but that’s just not realistic.” Don’t worry about finding the right spot for each and every item. Know that you’ll figure it out with an open mind combined with time spent in the kitchen. “It takes time. It takes trial and error,” my dad told me. “You just need to exist in your kitchen space for a while before you set it up perfectly.” My dad is still fine-tuning his own organizational scheme. He recently realized pasta rollers were taking up a prime spot in a drawer when he hadn’t made pasta from scratch in two years. “It’s time to go to the basement,” he said. “One day you’ll realize, ‘this just doesn’t work here,’ and you’ll move it to the right spot,” said Justin. A kitchen is a living and ripening room. Not only will items gravitate to the correct spots, but those spots will likely evolve. Farmers market hauls in the summer require a different setup than cookie-baking season in the winter, and that’s to say nothing of new functions needed in a kitchen when a baby is born or a new roommate moves in. Even when you’ve achieved a well-functioning kitchen, it’s helpful to internalize Heraclitus’s adage that the only constant in life is change. “It’s a mindset,” my dad said. Somebody just needs to tell the fridgescapers.