What adorns the front of your kitchen refrigerator?
Is it a menagerie of old magnets from vacation destinations? Love notes from your spouse? Coloring book pages from your kids or grandkids? Grocery store coupons? News clippings? Or maybe motivational quotes for your new diet this time of year?
In a digital world with countless electronic devices to communicate with our closest family members, kitchen refrigerators remain the busiest billboards in most homes. For generations of families, these household appliances serve as more than merely a refrigerated “ice box” to house perishable goods. They often hold our past joys, our future goals and our present day reminders to each other and to ourselves.
“Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does,” states one of many magnets on my home’s refrigerator. Another one preaches this 21st century truth, “After a long weekend without your phone, you learn what’s really important in life. Your phone.”
The front of our fridges are like movie theater marquee signs, featuring different things for our different moods at the time. Feeling fat and out of shape? Our home has a magnet for that.
“Who bringing you the food,” asks “Dr. Now,” also known as Dr. Younan Nowzaradan, who helps obese people lose weight on the reality TV show “My 600-lb Life.” Another magnet with his photo says, “The scale doesn’t lie, people lie.” You’re chuckling because you know it’s true. The struggle is real, people.
The current highlight on my refrigerator is a coloring book page of a dinosaur, illustrated by my 3-year-old grandson, Landon. He gave it to me when I last saw him. It’s messy, likely taking him just a few seconds to do. It’s not colored inside the lines. Yet it’s a true work of art in my world. I proudly stuck it on our fridge so I see it every time I open the door.
Like you, I probably open that fridge door too many times for too many fattening reasons. But when I do, I see an evolving collage of old photos, new happenings, and needed information, such as the mailing address for my fiance’s daughter at her current U.S. Air Force base in North Dakota. There’s no way I could remember it otherwise. It’s as handy as a carton of milk.
Why search through a junk drawer or filing cabinet or address book when you can simply glance at your kitchen fridge. Sure, smartphones are incredibly efficient, but refrigerator walls are incredibly dependable. It’s hard to lose the most important household appliance in any home. No one has ever said, “Has anyone seen where I put the fridge?”
To be safe, our home has a second fridge in the garage. Yep, its side wall is plastered with stuff, too. More kids’ drawings, more school projects, more magnets, more memories. No need to search through a buried box in the basement or attic. A beat-up old fridge — whose plug should have been pulled years ago — can still be the dearest time capsule of memories.
The collection of decorative magnets that clutter the side of our kitchen fridge is like a road map of our past vacations. Santa Monica, California. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Disney World. Graceland. Indiana Beach. New York City. Hollywood. It’s all there, magnetic reminders of our travels, and our chilled promises to someday return.
On Monday, I obtained two tickets to the annual Valparaiso Kiwanis Pancake Day event at the Porter County Expo Center on March 5. Guess where those tickets went as soon as I got ’em? Yep, front of the fridge, tucked behind a magnet I’ve had for 30 years from WXRT, 93.1-FM, my favorite radio station.
It’s placed next to a black and white photo, taken more than 50 years ago inside one of those old photo booths at a department store. It shows four small photos of my brother, sister and I with our aunt, each pose with different facial expressions. That old photo has been stuck on every fridge I’ve owned as an adult. Refrigerators can also be our favorite photo albums. No iCloud needed.
So, I ask you again: what adorns the front of your kitchen refrigerator? Check out my Facebook page, at www.facebook.com/JerDavich/, for replies from my social media readers.
Snowstorm coming? Make French toast!
On Monday, I waited in a long line at a grocery store behind customers who appeared to be stocking up for the predicted snowstorm that is expected to hit our region Wednesday. I overheard their chatter about weather forecasts ranging from 12 inches to more than two feet of snow by Thursday morning.
I’ll believe it when I’m shoveling it. People are always in the market for alarming weather forecasts as if it’s a first-time experience. Maybe it taps into our primal fight-or-flight response, or some kind of psychological self-preservation mechanism — even if it’s just another wintertime snowstorm.
While shopping at the store, I noticed certain products were running low on shelves, specifically bread, milk and eggs. My detective work led to this obvious conclusion: we’ve been conditioned to hunker down during blizzard conditions with the ultimate comfort food, French toast. It’s syrupy but true.
