Developing simple protocols for next level of fridge-sharing.
For some years now, our house refrigerator has mostly been shared by an ever-changing mix of three single adult residents — some short-term, some very long-term — plus occasional guests. Typically all of the shelves and the vegetable drawers are packed. Each person gets their own shelf, and their own shelf on the fridge door.
The person who has the bottom shelf and the person who has the middle shelf each also gets one of the two vegetable crisper drawers, to make up for the fact that they don’t have as much storage height as the top-shelf person.
This format works well for when individuals have a lot of different dietary requirements / medical needs etc so communal cooking isn’t practical. Also, a lot of people have had bad experiences with communal living arrangements, including bad experiences with sharing a fridge. So it can help to have some delineated boundaries.
For the past few years, the top shelf plus top door-shelf is one person’s space. And so on with the middle and bottom. But with cubby-boxes and some streamlining as shown here, each shelf could potentially be shared by two.
(The cubby-box is actually a crisper drawer from a larger fridge that someone was throwing away.)
By tightening and streamlining, such as sharing of condiments, it becomes feasible to share the fridge among four or five adults, or more, plus kids.
If each person has their own cubby-box (which could be labeled with masking-tape and marker, if people like), it’s easier to set boundaries to reassure people who have had issues with sharing a fridge in the past and are leery.
At this moment, while we are engaged in various experimental tweaks and thought-experiments to take the communal protocols to the next level, the fridge is temporarily not fully in use. The middle shelf contains a water filter pitcher, left by a previous resident. I now use it to provide chilled water to passersby who need it.
See this post with photo here, on my Facebook page DEEP GREEN book by jenny nazak.
Further Exploration:
• You might also enjoy Sharon Astyk’s superb post on sharing a kitchen in hard times/disasters. She and her husband have 10 kids, and are very much about optimizing sharing with community, so you can bet she knows a thing or two! I’ll post the link once I see it. I thought she had posted it already but maybe not. In the meantime, enjoy reading previous installments of her excellent series “prepping room by room.” I have often shared similar thoughts here on this blog, and it’s really solid advice. https://ko-fi.com/post/Prepping-Room-by-Room-Part-3-Bedrooms-T6T51HGFH8
Here’s a page with a list of some of Sharon’s recent posts. Including the prepping room by room series. It’s got part 1 bathroom, part 2 living room, part 3 bedroom. I think kitchen will probably be soon. https://ko-fi.com/sharonastyk/posts
***Update July 9, 2025: OK, here you go! Sharon’s post Prepping room by room: kitchens https://ko-fi.com/post/Prepping-Room-by-Room-Part-4-Kitchens-P5P01HQJD4
From Sharon’s kitchen prep post: “So I’ve been putting off this part of the series because it involves so many moving pieces. For most of us, Kitchens are the centerpiece of home in so many ways, and thus they are both most affected by disasters and also most important in some ways during a crisis. The reality is that all of us need to feed ourselves even during disaster.
“Years ago I wrote that the day after the end of the world, someone is going to get up and want breakfast. And that’s the truth. Worlds end. People die. But others go on. And that going on often happens first in the kitchen. So let’s talk about that. …”
#501collective #StarshineHouse