Is “Fridgescaping” Another Symptom of Our Increasingly Polarizing Times?

“Surprisingly, I never thought anybody would care about my refrigerator,” says Lynzi Judish, a TikTok creator who posts content about “decorating, organizing, and romanticizing” her home. Judish is one of many millennials and Gen Z’ers deliberately arranging the contents of her refrigerator all for the sake of “fridgescaping.”

The new fridge decor trend has been taking over TikTok, inspiring thousands of people to intentionally curate the inside of their fridge and post content of their creations online. Over the last few weeks, the hashtag has racked up 34.3 million posts. But you might be surprised to hear that fridgescaping has actually been around for a minute—blogger Kathy Perdue first coined the term 13 years ago. The recent spark can be traced back to a post on Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” on August 15.

The user, Icy-Shelter9897, wrote, “Recently my wife has taken to ‘fridgescaping,’ I guess it’s a recent trend because I’d never heard about it before this.” From there, he explains how his wife started decorating their fridge with flowers and that it’s getting on his nerves because the items block the food. “She keeps taking it as a personal slight and acts like I’ve done something deliberately to hurt her, when I haven’t,” he continues before dismissing the hobby as “stupid.” Since then, his wife has allegedly been very distant, not like herself, and avoiding intimacy.

As expected, the post sparked a lot of debate, resulting in 11,000 upvotes and 3,800 comments. Some users argued in favor of the OP calling the activity “dumb” while others called him out for killing someone’s joy, which brings us back to the present.

So why exactly are people doing this?

“For some participants of this trend, it’s about organizing the fridge with decorative containers,” explains Kristen Moonjian, director, home and lifestyle at Fashion Snoops. “For others, it goes beyond that with the incorporation of flowers, vases, twinkle lights, LED candles, framed artwork and more.” Judish is one of the biggest—and most recent—arbiters of the trend now. With a background in photography, the creator makes viral content about her home decor aesthetic, but it’s her fridgesaping videos that have gone the most viral. She only started making this type of content in June after seeing @rosemaryfairy and @jenefertaylor do their own fridgescaping videos on Instagram. “It’s tablescaping for your fridge,” Judish says. “It’s taking something that’s maybe a bit mundane or even overwhelming, like it was for me, and making it beautiful.” With this, the goal is to make your fridge more aesthetically pleasing and to bright up the space.

Judish’s content often takes on elaborate themes with props meant to emulate pieces of pop culture. For instance, her Bridgerton-themed fridgescape came out around the same time as the Netflix show while another celebrated the millennial woman’s favorite film, Practical Magic. Similar to romanticizing your life, which has become something of a collective mantra right now, “romanticizing your refrigerator” can be enticing for a lot of reasons according to Judish. First, it makes things look more enticing. Next, it helps waste less food because you can see everything in your fridge and keep better stock. “More than anything, it’s just a way to jazz up something that’s usually kind of boring in your life,” she adds.