Assignment: Thoughtless Acts

Collaborators:

The Fridge as Universal Clipboard

I noticed, that the fridge that me and my roomies share, actually has a lot more functions than only refridgerating:

• First of all it is used as common clipboard to attach little notes, post-its or entire posters. The notes often contain urgent messages, missed calls or the whereabouts of each person.
• Secondly, there is a map of Berkeley pinned to its front. This map contains all food stores of the surrounding area and where to get fruits, vegetables, meat or special things. Furthermore there is a map of California pinned to it, because the kitchen happens to be the most used room in the house. So people tend to chat and interchange information about Californian places they have visited.
• And last but not least there is bottle opener hung on a string. A lot of times when you open the fridge, we also need to look for a bottle opener, so here is a selfmade solution that lets you quickly access the opener right at the spot of refridgeration.

I found the bottle opener especially interesting. It seems to me that it is more an issue in Europe than in the USA, since some bottle manufacturers here tend to produce screw caps which are not common at all in European countries. However there are also smart solutions besides the selfmade solution of a bottle opener pinned to the fridge:

The company called 'Reef' has a patent on flip flops with a built-in can opener:

So basically I found it interesting how the fridge is used as a workaround for a lot of things we encounter several times a day. Companies have partly realized that and build magnetic fridge doors or bulletin boards. However I think there is more to it than they have explored so far. Considering the fridge as one of the key parts in a kitchen and as a location that people pass several times a day, it can not only be used as common storage room, but can also contain integrated tools such as bottle openers, can openers, different kind of food processors, post-its for helping us memorize things or entire document racks.