How to: Win the silent roommate food war

Part 1: Refrigerator

As someone who spends most of my time in the kitchen, here are some unspoken ways of winning the roommate war on food space.

Here’s the setup:

Prior to my new roommate, the refrigerator was a free for all. Meaning, put whatever you want wherever it fits. While I had a strategy for this situation, we finally decided to allocate shelves for our food. There are three of us.

I have the Brita that everyone uses and it only fits on the top shelf. I requested the top shelf because it has the most room to stack food. I won the top shelf.

That leaves the bottom shelf, vegetable drawer, and the door shelf as shared real estate. 

Door shelf:

As soon as you finish a condiment or sauce that lived on the door shelf, you forfeit your spot. The less door shelf space you take up means the more of your personal shelf space you must sacrifice for your sauces. The best way to avoid this predicament is to buy a new sauce when you’re 1-2 servings away from finishing the old one. The new sauce lives on your shelf for a day or two, and then you swap it right when you finish the old. It’s as if the bottle never left the door shelf.

Bottom shelf:

Put items that are a staple in your diet. For example, if you tend to always have wraps or bread, store it on the bottom shelf. It never runs out, it always has a place and you’ll never stress about losing the spot.

Vegetable drawer:

Always go food shopping once the drawer gets empty. Bonus points if you get your shopping done before your roommates. This creates more opportunities for you to fill the drawer with your groceries. I would recommend filling the drawer intentionally by choosing either the right or left side.

I believe you can tell a lot about someone based on the contents of their refrigerator.

Newsletter posted bi-weekly on Saturdays at 11:10am.