An Ode To The Single Dude’s Refrigerator

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Sitting there scratching yourself while watching True Detective on demand, you’ve already finished the takeout you grabbed on your way home from work. Still hungry, you lumber over to your refrigerator exposing a light brighter than the television itself as you open it. In what should be a treasure of nourishing, healthy delights, you find a desolate space of white plastic and clear glass reminiscent of that of an evicted apartment.

The shelves, they’re lonely. Sticky with spilled beer, leaky takeout containers, and old wine from that bottle you laid on it’s side because it was too tall to stand up straight, you tell yourself, “Shit, I should clean that this weekend,” only to shut the door and forget about it altogether. That’s a task for another day.

On the bottom shelf sits your refrigerator’s staple — the hot dogs. Two by two, they get removed for grilling on a regular basis only to be replaced after your next trip to the grocery store where, for some reason, you go in thinking you may change your eating habits. But no, you revert to old faithful, and the Hot Dog Diet continues. But luckily, you bought a family-sized bottle of yellow mustard that rests snugly next to the pack of Koegel’s.

Stocked with a half-full twelve-pack of cheap, domestic beer, you wonder to yourself why you put the entire box in that takes up 60 percent of the shelf rather than just unload each beer individually for easy access and general cleanliness. But next to it is a pizza from the weekend that’s now covered in dried cheese and weirdly white, pale pepperonis. “How long is too long to keep this pizza?” you wonder as you pick a single pepperoni off to test. But the hardened whisps of cheese coming off the side of that partially-eaten slice whisper, “too old to eat,” so you shut the box and move on.

And the door, oh, the door. Perhaps the most full part of the entire refrigerator, it’s loaded with everything you’ll never use to completion. A half-full bottle of Sriracha sits next to numerous other hot sauces that you shamelessly stole from Mexican restaurants all over town. There’s a vinaigrette that you made when you had that girl over a few weeks ago that has now completely separated never to be used again. But cleaning that dressing container is your own personal Everest, so there it sits for another two weeks until you just throw the entire thing out. And that jar of Smuckers? You and I both know it’s going to be a sticky mess trying to get that top off, so you might as well just highjack some one-offs from breakfast next time you hit that homely diner before work. Because, hey, you’ll get a better variety that way anyway.

Opening the drawers is the wild card: is there any lunch meat that isn’t too slimy? Did you remember to put that half-eaten pack of bacon into a plastic bag to preserve it? You wonder if that lettuce from week’s past has gone bad or somehow withstood the test of time and avoided wilting. But alas, no. The lunch meat is long gone, the pack of bacon is wide open, and that organic arugula is slimy and will leave a black residue on the plastic container when you awkwardly shove it down the disposal.

“I’ll go to Whole Foods and stock up on healthy food for the week,” you optimistically say to yourself, knowing well that there’s not a chance in hell that will ever happen. Because when it’s all said and done, all that food is just gonna go bad, man. That $70 could get you anywhere between 6-8 Postmates orders, so play it safe and stay in your wheelhouse.

So there you sit, on your couch, eating a leftover burrito bowl with dicey day-old guacamole, wondering if you’ll ever change your ways. But we know you won’t until you take the plunge to move in with your girlfriend after years of resisting.

And that’s perfectly fine. .

Image via Shutterstock

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Will

Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.

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