Why ‘fridgescaping’ is the most unhinged Instagram trend yet

Forget new year, new you. In 2025, it’s all about new year, new fridge.

We’re not talking buying a new fridge here – oh no, it’s about styling the inside of the fridge you already own. Giving it a refresh. A makeover. A facelift. Perhaps adding a strategically placed photo frame here, a vintage vase filled with a fresh flower arrangement there. Welcome to “fridgescaping”, officially the most unhinged interiors trend to grace social media since… well, ever.

While I am technically on Instagram, I’m not on on it; I’m not an “Instagram person”, if you will. I might watch a friend’s story from time to time, or like an acquaintance’s reel, but I’m not in the habit of scrolling through endless influencers’ posts showcasing the hottest new lifestyle choices that tell the world how perfect you are, one totally unnecessary design hack at a time. So it fell to a Gen Z colleague who frequents TikTok to inform me of the existence of “fridgescaping”: accessorising the interior of your fridge with pictures, pottery, wicker receptacles and candles (I mean, come on!). Though the trend has been doing the rounds since summer, it’s taken until now for it to bubble up onto the radar of this creaking millennial.

I initially assumed the concept must be a joke. Ha ha. Pull the other one. It’s got bells on.

But no. The latest heinous trend to be birthed by mumfluencers and Insta-interiors “gurus” is all too real. However small the demographic, some people really are putting framed paintings inside their fridges alongside their scrag ends of cheese and tubs of marg (hidden behind a genteel ceramic dish, naturally).

Once I’d got over the initial disbelief, eye-rolling and hysteria, I quickly tipped over into full-on rage. Why? Because the humble fridge – literally one of the most mundanely practically, unbeatably useful appliances of the modern age – has now been reduced to yet another performative status symbol. Fuelled by an online landscape in which form is increasingly supposed to trump function despite our hectic daily lives, it represents just one more way to fall short of the aesthetic ideal. What – you haven’t had time to transform the innards of your fridge into a small yet perfectly curated art gallery? You haven’t managed to place the carrots next to the butternut squash slices and a jug of orange juice for a dopamine-boosting co-ord look that’s perfect for winter? Why on earth not?!

“It’s one place YOU look every single day. Fill it with love,” reads a caption on one viral video. “My absolute most favourite place to decorate is INSIDE the fridge because it’s the one place most people, themselves look every single day. I make it beautiful for myself!” Ugh. Kill me now.

What’s particularly galling on a personal level is the notion that one would even have the space to engage in such tomfoolery. The only room for my fridge is under a kitchen counter, meaning it’s half-height with a freezer roughly the size of a shoebox built in. I also share it with a full-grown adult man, and the logistical gymnastics required to fit in two humans’ groceries is something I wouldn’t wish on my mortal enemy.

Every week when the shopping delivery arrives, I squeeze and squish and huff and puff, balancing teetering pots of yoghurt on Tupperware leftovers and shoving bags of spinach into the gaps until the entire contents are held in place in such a way that the moment one item is removed, the whole unstable affair comes crashing down. I inevitably admit defeat with some of the more shapely vegetables, chucking the broccoli in a cupboard and simply hoping it doesn’t go inedibly soft before consumption. Tell me, pray, WHERE THE HECK IS THE PHOTO OF A SUNSET SUPPOSED TO GO?

Of course, no trend is born in a vacuum. Fridgescaping is only possible as a concept thanks to the bonkers social media design fads that came before it, each pushing the Overton window of interiors into new, ever more obnoxious territory. There’s long been the penchant for stripping homes of every ounce of character and drowning them in floor-to-ceiling neutral tones, of course (hello beige and “millennial grey”!), but remember the viral moment that was displaying your books backwards, spine to the wall, so that only the colourless pages were on show? Taking hours out of your week to decant every single thing you own, from pasta to dishwasher tabs, into individually labelled lever arm jars? Going to the other end of the spectrum and bedecking your abode in trinkets and mirrorballs galore, so that it more closely resembles a funhouse than a functioning house?

But the real precursor to fridgescaping is surely the wider CleanTok movement, which sees people meticulously scrubbing and organising every inch of their homes until they look better suited to a cyborg than a person. Restocking videos – whereby people put their bougie groceries in specific compartments and containers in their perfect, oversized fridges – have become a staple trope, addictive for their weirdly soothing, ASMR-like quality. Fridgescaping, in fact, feels like the creepy lovechild of this particular trend and the cottagecore aesthetic (think rugged wooden everything, earthenware jugs, vintage lace and doilies).

There’s a murky truth behind all these bright and breezy TikTok and Insta ideals though: control. Whether it’s watching someone deep-cleaning their pantry, refilling identical storage boxes or fastidiously designing and curating every single element of their lifestyle so that it looks catalogue-ready on the photo grid, the true appeal is the idea that life can be designed; curated; controlled. It’s the ultimate fantasy. And, as most of us know deep down, the ultimate lie.

Painting everything beige won’t protect you from a health scare; flipping your books the wrong way round won’t stop you from getting made redundant; and shoving an inexplicable candle into your fridge isn’t a talisman against any of life’s constant unexpected twists and turns.

My advice? Leave the photo frames out of the refrigerator for 2025, and concentrate on what’s really important: accessing that scrag end of cheese before the “new year, new you” really kicks in.