Cool

Organizing the refrigerator is more challenging and stimulating than you might think. To me, it's something like the Bento boxes that the Japanese are so fond of. As I understand it, a Bento box is simply a boxed lunch- nothing more than the sack lunch that millions take with them to work or school here in America. The critical difference is the interest in aesthetic that the Japanese seem to have, and I find that fascinating.

I'm no Japanophile, if that's the word for it, but I'll admit to a certain interest in efficiently and pleasingly  stocking the refrigerator (and the cupboard as well, but let's not go too far afield). I must further confess that I'm not much good at it. This is mainly an aspirational thing that I only occasionally do remotely as well as I would like to. Still, I have done lots of thinking about properly filling the refrigerator even if I haven't put it all into practice.

There is a complication for me that isn't true for all. I have two roommates. Each of us three does his own shopping and stocks his groceries separately. Worse, there are no established boundaries for our respective foodstuffs, nor is there any protocol for labeling foods. Consequently, many problems crop up. I have purchased, forgotten about and replaced such items as butter, which is not something you want to languish in obscurity for long.

One of the many things I mean to improve at is the practical matter of keeping the refrigerator neat, clean and well organized. More whimsically, I would like to make it pretty to look at. It need not be as a display in a grocery store would be- I could imagine getting more avant-garde than that with my food- but it will definitely be very deliberate in a way that goes far beyond the logic of where things ought to be kept in order to stay fresh and easily found. It'll really be something.