Everyone has a different refrigerator. Not only are the inside contents different and reflective of the owner, but the outsides of a refrigerator express the household it serves.

I became curious as to when the idea of decorating refrigerators began because the idea is so common in my culture now and presents this cozy idea in a home that I love. However, there is no good origin story that I can find. The only details I can find to why refrigerators became magnetic on the front are dark and do not especially fit the aura I want this article to have; refrigerators basically became magnetic in the 1950s so that they could be opened from the inside or the outside. (I linked the dark details in case you are interested.)

On the other hand, the basic change in design that caused refrigerators to be magnetic allowed the decorative display of pictures, drawings, magnets, awards, newspaper clippings, and any other cool news. My refrigerator is completely covered to the point where you can expect a couple of things to fall if you open the freezer door too quickly. A bunch of my old drawings are still on the door, along with a few magnets that I have made recently. There are some old pictures, a few larger signs or quotes, and some cool postcards. The papers and magnets are layered to the point where many pictures are completely covered up. This refrigerator completely reflects my family’s aesthetic and the aesthetic that I have seemed to inherit. We have paintings and pictures and posters and bookshelves covering every wall of our house, and my parents’ classrooms are filled to the brim with posters and pictures to offset the white cinder block public school walls. I feel like the front of our refrigerator perfectly demonstrates this, what I would call, artistic tendency to fill up space with visuals.

However, I know that not all refrigerators are like my own. Most of them probably are not like it because of the sleek, simple aesthetic of modern design that is common today. But even if they are decorated, all refrigerators are still different. When I would go to my grandparents’ houses, each of theirs is different. On one, I would precisely arrange pictures of grandkids every time I was there; the pictures would all be perfectly spaced out and fit together like a puzzle. On my other grandparents’ fridge, the front door was not magnetic, but the side was. So, I know that the tiny space where the side of the refrigerator is visible is filled with magnets and pictures. Most of the time, if I am at someone’s house, their refrigerators have nice school photos of kids and Christmas cards. Ours just happens to have strange bumper stickers and messy oil pastel drawings from six years ago. A few years ago, a few grades or award letters of mine may have overlapped some of the older decorations.

I want to know the origin of this, but I do not think there is one. I can research how refrigerators became magnetic but not this abstract, personal trend of using magnets to hang up the moments of daily life. I guess I will just have to ask enough people about their refrigerators at home and draw my own conclusion.