Just today my friend Edie reminded me of a conundrum that my husband and I have had since we got married. Two-door or single door refrigerator? I grew up with a single door and could always find stuff. Even if it was buried in the back, the width of the fridge allowed you to be able to see behind other things. And it was never deep enough to allow anything to hide in the back and molder for months at a time. It also was never 3,000 cubic feet of space and depth. Like a closet or a pantry cupboard, refrigerators should never be too deep or too large. Maybe there was a sensible reason women shopped more frequently. Forget waste not want not. How about see no evil, smell no evil?About twelve years ago when we renovated our New Hampshire house we bought one of those big, SuperCubic fridges. It had two doors, lots of shelves, capacious storage space, and the coveted ice and water dispenser in the door. I have thrown away more waste from that refrigerator and freezer just by the nature of its design. Shelves were never wide enough for party preparations so things invariably got jammed in the back. Stuff in the far corners of the fridge invariably froze into a solid mass. Iced lettuce anyone?
The unit was almost three feet deep so my short person arms could barely reach all the way in. This necessitated having to stand on a teetering stool or asking my husband or children to fetch something for me lest I fell in and became part of a weeks-old mystery casserole.
"Oh, Mama, you're such a dwarf!"
Imagine the rollicking laughter as mama tries to prepare dinner only to have a chorus of voices and pointing fingers at the skirt-clad Mrs. Oompa Loompa, half in the fridge, half out of it, who is only trying to feed her young. [Speaking of Oompa Loompas, here is the very best scene in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie, with Gene Wilder, set to hip-hop. Although freakish, it defines my life on most days! On second thought, I don't believe there were any females of the species at the chocolate factory but surely they must have existed in Ooompa Loompa land.]
Our new fridge, which we inherited with the double-wide, is a newer two-door model with less depth and more width. Made by Maytag, it's a step up from our 12-year old General Electric model. But things can still get lost in it. We like the ice machine and water dispenser. I'm learning to live in two-door paradise and trying to be more vigilant about what's in the fridge and where. But here's the other problem: just when you get a system in place and know where everything is, one of five other members of your household comes in, rearranges or uses things, and then doesn't put the item back where it belongs. Isn't that the reason for most failed organizational plans? For most discord in life?
The Brits and Aussies have the right idea in fridge size (or at least used to). But where to put all of those party platters? © State Library of Victoria
For some reason men--and I believe it is the group of men who are not regular cooks--seem to prefer the really big cubic, two-door variety. Maybe it is because they don't like the idea that the other kind doesn't have an ice machine. Maybe they just have large appliance envy. This group of men also doesn't know much about organizing things. They would rather shove something in a drawer or bin or back of the fridge than to put it into any kind of order. And then they have the nerve to complain because you haven't used up things in the fridge, often items that they have placed carefully into the cavernous nether regions of the electric food cave.
My standard line in such moments? "Oh, I must have forgotten it was there!"
Clearly. This response doesn't cast blame or attack the other fridge user and it deflects blame in a careful manner. It is also just a statement of fact. Out of sight, out of mind. I suspect that these two-door fridge designers are in collusion with the food industry. I can hear the pitch now when they went from one-door to two-door fridges back in the 1970s:
You see, we tempt them with capaciousness and then those unsuspecting housewives stuff these babies to the gills and shop more and then forget what they've bought! And their husbands and kids further screw up the works by 'getting into the fridge' all the time. Brilliant. Oh, and add the ice/water dispenser in the freezer door. Men will want those for their cocktails and let's face it, men will be the ultimate lure in the refrigerator purchase. Women just think they have the upper hand on this one but the guys still buy and bring home the bacon. The little dolls just put it away...in their new two-door refrigerators! They'll never know what hit them! AH, HA, HA, HA, HA!
**This LG 4-door French refrigerator-freezer is probably the right idea: 2 freezer drawers and even an ice machine on the left fridge door, as per tradition. [Images from The Appliancist]**Someone is making a LOT of money from the "LG" logo = Life's Good. They just copyrighted the phrase. Imagine that.
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