Do it all the time- no storage container to clean, and you clean the pan itself once instead of twice.
I don’t have room in my fridge for a skillet, and also my skillets don’t have lids that fit them (my lids fit my pots but not the skillets, even though it all came as one set).
Also, I almost never use the oven to reheat anything - I microwave instead.
Me, I put the food back in the skillet, and then put the skillet in my filing cabinet. Under “S.”
There is a good food safety point – a large portion will not cool quickly enough to be safe from bacterial growth, while several smaller portions will. I’m not personally too picky about such, but it is something to consider.
Also, I don’t have such a surplus of pans that I can use them as storage containers. I might need that skillet, or stockpot, or saucepan the next morning. That’s why I buy cheap plastic storage dishes.
So anybody just haul the pot out to the garage and put it on a table or the hood of the car you never drive during the winter. Or is it just me?
Pots, often. Skillets, not yet.
Pots and skillets, yeah. My husband is really into this – I probably do it more now because he does. But I like the economy of washing just one thing.
I do it from time to time - but I feel like a lazy slob who can’t be bothered to clean the skillet and am thankful that my mother will not be looking into my refrigerator.
If I thought that there was any chance that she (or anyone else) would look into the refrigerator, I’d put whatever it was in tupperware. Or make plans to die of shame.
I don’t have a garage, so that’d be tricky. 
But I have been known to take advantage of an obliging snowbank in the backyard for my largest pots of soup. That’s just to cool the contents, though. Once it’s cool, into containers it goes.
Not to be judgmental or anything but it strikes me as lazy! I don’t think the food would be sealed properly in a pot or skillet anyway.
I make giant stockpots of soup and chili all the time. Sunday I put most of the soup into a similarly sized Rubbermaid container. Which seals.
I agree with the freshness issue. I can’t imagine it being air tight like a tupperware container. As for the laziness, yes, I can say I have definitely pointed out to my ex husband that putting the entire pot into the fridge is lazy. However, I don’t know you people so I won’t nag you.
It seems unsanitary to me. Although I don’t know why. I guess because it isn’t sealed properly. I also don’t store things with just saran wrap or aluminum foil either.
If you have enough room in the fridge to do it - more power to ya!
As for us, space is at a premium. If I’m feeling lazy I’ll throw the pot of soup in. It actually drove me crazy growing up when my mom would cram a pot into the fridge and then you had to stand on your head and hold your breath that it wouldn’t fall out when you opened the fridge.
pots. yes.
skillets. no.
Never seen it either. I lived with a Chinese guy once who just left whatever he cooked sitting on the stove top in a pot until the next day. . .chicken, beef, whatever. He’d turn the burner off of course.
I’ve never seen skillets in the fridge. It’s not that hard to spoon skillet-type food into a container, and then microwave it later. A large stock pot full of soup, or a casserole pan with half the lasagna left, sure. Or maybe a Thanksgiving turkey carcass, cause it’s not like you’d have anything big enough anyway.
Occasional big pots with soup (the kind with two handles), no room for regular skillets/woks/pots - I have a habit of not wanting leftovers in a timely manner (unless turkey is involved!) and this poses too many problems. Tupperware* takes up less room and has tight sealing lids to avoid smell seapage into delicious things like my milk or sour cream.
But if you can do it, I say rock it. I don’t think I’d say anything if I observed my host/ess doing such a thing - I’d probably be a little wistful because my own fridge wasn’t nearly large/uncluttered enough to get away with doing it myself.
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- Lies. I use Rubbermaid Premier, with the black lids. Holy mother of tomato sauce, do those things seal tight and stay clean!
If our refrigerator ever got to the point that we had that much room, it would mean I am already shopping at the grocery store. And if someone were that inconsiderate of refrigerator space, the pot would be thrown out, no questions asked, when I got home with the groceries.
I never do it because I would not want to cook in the same pot a second day without washing it. I don’t like the idea of a bunch of dried crusty little sauce bits dropping back into the sauce. Also, most things I reheat would be done in the microwave anyway.
Dried up crusty sauce bits are where all the flavor is. That is exactly what you want dropping back into the sauce, not the water that evaporated to leave those crusty bits.
Not weird, just not practical for me. I don’t have the space in my fridge for that. But I have done it with stews.
I wouldn’t do it because I would think it would be hard on the skillet itself. Wouldn’t going from a cold fridge to over a lit gas burner make the pan warp? Does your skillet have a funny hump in the middle or is it flat?