Feng Shui for the fridge? Yes, to reduce food waste

Feng Shui and domestic life: a "philosophical" approach about how to furnish rooms to ensure positive energy flows throughout the home. However, there are those who maintain that this approach can also be applied to other areas of life, including the refrigerator: adherents claim the Eastern philosophy will help us reduce food waste.

Are you really using your fridge in the most efficient way possible?

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The idea of using Feng Shui with the fridge was populariszed by Jiaying Zhao, a behavioral scientist at the University of British Columbia, during a TED Talk recently.

The basic assertion is that we organize our fridges incorrectly. Modern fridges (and their manufacturers' guideline) advise us about where to store the various food types by, for example, having compartments that have supposedly been specifically designed to optimize their conservation: for example, vegetables and fruit go into the so-caller "crisper" drawer, and food that goes off quickly is allocated to the bottom of the fridge, where the temperatures are coldest.

So, what's the problem? The problem is a lot of perishable foods get hidden away. In short, it's a sort of "out of sight, out of mind" problem!

And this is where the Feng Shui approach can help to save us money and avoid waste.

Feng Shui in the refrigerator

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A change of perspective is what is needed, it is claimed: it is true, of course, that a fridge is designed to guarantee optimal food storage conditions, but the behavioral habits of the average person undercuts this efficiency.

The Feng Shui approach can be adapted to organising the fridge too, adherents state. The focus is on highly perishable foods and ensuring they are postioned to be  well within our visual fields, for example:

• In the doors: we definitely look at the inside of the fridge doors when we open it, and if we put perishable items at eye level here, we won't forget about them. This is the ideal place for jars of various sauces, or small airtight containers.
• Towards the front edges of the central shelves (like products displayed on supermarket shelves)!

In this regard, Zhao says: "Every time I open the fridge I immediately notice the fruits, vegetables, and other perishable things, so I consume them before they go bad."

To those who say that putting certain foods in the fridge door means making them spoil even quicker (being further from the cold areas and being exposed  every time we open the fridge), Zhao respondes: "It's a question about how much more important it is to make a food last a long time versus reminding us to eat these foods before they spoil".

“It may seem like a small thing to do, but behavioral science shows us that some of the smallest gestures can have the biggest impact,” Zhao states What do you think? How much food do you throw away just because you forgot about it?!