I vote no.
As a kid (before they invented magnets) the only thing on the fridge might be a kid’s finger painting, but once we were old enough to handle thumbtacks they were all moved into our rooms on cork boards and the fridge was clear.
My ex put dozens of things on the fridge, even stuff that made no sense, like non-decorative pizza ads for defunct shops, and voting slates for bygone elections.
Finally I got a new fridge with a decorative plastic panel on the front and her clutter was relegated to the sides.
And now that she’s gone, her %$# clutter is gone too!
I have an adult kitchen again at last.
But enough about me.
What’s on your fridge?
(And, to clarify, I don’t care if you have stuff there, unless it’s pictures of me with my ex, which she has on hers, which is creepy.)
My fridge has the school year calendar, a coupon for a free kids meal at Boston Market, and lots and lots of magnets. Fear Factor magnets, freebie drug rep magnets from work, picture frame magnets, angel magnets, pizza place magnets, movie store magnets, restaurant magnets, and letter magnets.
The word magnet starts to sound weird if you say it long enough.
My fridge would probably make you nuts, marginal prophet.
I have a calendar on the freezer part, to keep track of all our activities - the kids have lots of things going on, and with sometimes-crazy work schedules and volunteer activites, I need it all written down.
Then there are the magnets. Yeah, I have a bunch. Pizza shop magnets (not from any defunct shops, mind you - if they’re out of business, the magnet goes in the trash), and a variety of food-delivery magnets, sure. Part of me is saying, “Doesn’t everyone?”
I have a couple of pretty magnets - little Monet and Mary Cassat prints.
I have a couple of cat and dog magnets, too. Nothing too cutsey - I hate that crap. My SIL gives me the cutsey-wootsey shit and I give it away or throw it away.
I have firehouse and fire engine and EMT magnets like you wouldn’t believe. When we go to the state firefighter’s convention every year, we get a bunch of freebies.
I have magnets from places we’ve been on vacation. They’re all similar, though. They have to be flat and have a photo of the place on it. Not those raised state-shaped types.
My kids made magnets a couple of years at school as a fund-raiser. They drew a picture on a paper, and the school sent it off to a company who recreated it on all sorts of things; 3 x 5 inch magnets, t-shirts, greeting cards, mouse pads, what-have-you. You could buy whatever you wanted with your child’s artwork on it and the profits went to the school. I always bought the magnets because they were cute (and cheap!).
We have a magnetic poetry kit on our fridge, with odd poems that our friends have concocted. We have photos of our pets, and a photo of me crossing the finish line in my first half-marathon. Also a couple of cartoons that we like.
I see three big square freebie magnets that came attached to our phone books, and a freebie AMEX credit card magnet that my husband got the other day (he opened the mail, found the magnet, said, “Oh, cool!”, stuck the magnet on the fridge and promptly ripped up the offer in the envelope and tossed it in the recycling bin), a little “clip” type magnet with a picture of an Inuit that says “Alaska”, a little poalr bear magent with a little fish in his belly, three business-card style magnets for various companies, a magnet for Romio’s Pizza, a flat, rectangular magnet with a cartoon puppy on it, and another with a purple cat on it, and one huge pink ribbon magnet from the last breast cancer awareness walk we did.
These various magnets are holding up: many, many business cards, for our various doctors, my lawyer, our car dealership, and my FIL’s work number. A piece of artwork I did together with a friend’s (then) 3 year old (she dictated, I drew, then she coloured. She then told me how to spell her name and made me write it. Apparently, you spell “Abby” thusly: YDJB4 11 11 6 11 T. You must say the “T” triumphantly.), another piece of art done exclusively by Abby herself (it looks like a vortex of some sort). Another piece of surrealist art done by myself after visiting a link someone posted in Cafe Society some time ago. I thought it looked neat, but mostly I just wanted to test out our new printer. My husband came home and thought it was so cool, he promptly hung it on the fridge. (my husband does many things promptly, according to this post, apparently.) Aaaaand one more picture, printed on photographic paper, of a close up of some flowers I took at the zoo one day. It had been sitting, frameless, on our corner cubby, and when I was cleaning up last weekend, I got tired of it being there, and it is now hanging on our fridge, held up by Mr. Polar Bear.
It sounds like way more than it is. Just wait until we actually have kids…
I really don’t know what color our fridge is, come to think of it. There are so many magnet, pizza coupons, recipes, etc. stuck to it it’s kinda hard to tell. We always try to find a magnet everywhere we travel, and the sides are covered with magnetic poetry. Not to mention big magnetic baseball schedules for the Dodgers, Padres, and Quakes. And the current shopping list.
I’m kind of weird about my fridge decor. When it gets cluttered with magnets, business cards, and kids’ work, I’ll say “enough!”, clean off the damn thing, and bask in it’s utter blankness.
Until the children bring home something really cute from school. Then things slowly begin to creep back on the fridge.
I’m strange, though. I crave a minimalist decor in my home, but I’m an utter pack rat. I wonder if they make a medication for that?
I’ve got a lot of crap on my fridge and to tell you the truth, I hate it. But I don’t have space for a bigger bulletin board (my house is all windows and doors…very little wall space) so I’m sort of stuck. I really hate the clutter, though. And wiping down the fridge is a huge project because you have to pick all the magnets and notes off and it takes more time than the actual wiping down takes. Plus, it’s a fucking eyesore.
We don’t have a lot of paper stuff on the fridge, (Mr. L does not like clutter!) but we have a lot of magnets. Mr. L and I purchase a souvenir magnet from every place we visit. We have magnets from Las Vegas, Minnesota, Spain, Brazil, Chesapeake Bay, the US Virgin Islands, Florida, Hawaii, Ireland, NYC, Budapest, Charleston, SC, Toronto … and probably others I can’t remember right now. They are lovely (no, not kitschy at all! – Really!) and handy just in case something noteworthy does need to be posted – like a handscribbled invitation to our grandsons’ 2nd birthday party! They are such cutie pies – how can their handiwork not go on the fridge?
The front of my fridge is pristine. And always will be. Useless clutter is the sign of a, well, something I’m not.
But, I do have my silly side …
One side of the fridge is slightly acessible, with about a 4" gap between it and the wall. That almost invisible side holds a rapidly growing collection of real estate agent promotional magnets. Our area has more RE agents than summer mosquitos, and every one of them helpfully sends out a magnet a month, often big ones with the NFL or MLB or NHL or … schedule on them.
My whimsical goal is to see how many months it’ll take to completely cover the side of the fridge top to bottom & front to back with freebie magnets. Must be real estate dorks, er, salespeople; all the pizza ones go in the trash. Somehow they’re just not whimsical enough.
Since the magnets are all different sizes & shapes (a 6" tall homeplate was popular a couple months ago), arranging them to tile the surface is kinda fun too in a math geek / artist sort of way
We have the useless magnet collection, mainly. I used to stick any magnet we got at the state fair or in the mail on there, but it got to the point where nothing else would fit, so I weeded out all of the magnets that weren’t souvenirs and that had phone numbers we could actually use (like the newspaper and the electric company). Citibank and realtor magnets go straight in the trash now.
The public school used to send home a calendar that was an 8 x 6 magnet, which was very useful on the fridge. We do still have two magnetic clips that are used to hold important papers, like long-term school projects or the scout troop’s phone list. If they weren’t on the door of the fridge, they would get thrown out or otherwise lost.
School artwork goes on the child’s bedroom door, using poster tack.
Mine has a handful of magnets on it (gifts from my mom, and one that my cousin made for me), along with a note pad so I can write notes to myself, I guess (another gift from mom). No pen, though, so I never write notes to myself. I should clear the fridge off, I guess.
I’ve been going to a bunch of open houses recently, and on the open house fridges, no magnets. (Of course, open house houses have no towels in the bathrooms, no clocks on the bedside tables, etc., so they’re kind of creepy and alien-like.)
I have a small magnet collection. It consists of miniature food items that look real. Or miniature kitchen items like a tiny cheese grater.
I’m VERY picky, they have to be the type that look like the real thing only small, but not those smaller than a penny ones that you get for doll houses.
I used to have a really cute collection, but lost them in some move or another about 10 years ago. The little mini-food magnets are really hard to find now. I have one cool miniature carton of chinese noodles, a teeny bathroom scale, a little cheese grater, and a basket of bakery items (small fake ones of course), and a few other minis.
I used to have a small mug of beer with a pretzel, a teeny taco, a cup of coffee with a donut…a tiny movie snack tray complete iwth nini popcorn (NO idea how they did that), and several other really cute ones.
Wish I could find more, but they’re hard to find. My old fridge, before my more extensive magnet collection disappeared, was arranged artfully, and kids loved to rearrange and play with the mini food items.
Mine’s fairly minimal. I have a Lady Cottington’s pressed-fairy calendar and a Darwin-fish magnet that I occasionally use to hold up a note. Both are there to help navigate the thick fog I find myself in most mornings–a reminder of what day it is, and of anything I need to break my routine for.
I’ve got the Dress-Up David and Dress-up Venus dolls, along with the “Rolling Stone Killed the Cat” proverbs kit, some magnets from the radio station where I used to work, a few magnets I picked up at job fairs, Domino’s, one with early heart attack warning signs/CPR/emergency numbers and a couple of magnetic frames.
It’s fun to screw with the proverbs but apparently you can’t get the David or Venus kits anymore. It wasn’t Venus DeMilo or Venus on the Half Shell, either, it was this one.
One side is photos of friends and family, with a dry erase board that holds my shopping list.
The front is mostly greeting cards from friends and family because they write such sweet/funny stuff that I have to read them over and over again.
Also on the front is a list of my ongoing goals - what I want most out of life and what I need to focus on.
The other side is more photos and more greeting cards. And a picture of my current TV boyfriends, Wentworth Miller.
I envy those of you with pristine fridges. In my fantasy kitchen, my fridge would also be pristine. Yet in real life, it is not. One thing I do like is a big honking metal magnet that came with my meat thermometer, it’s a chart of safe cooking temperatures for different kinds of meat. I like it because it’s very industrial looking. It has a look of “I’m cooking meat, don’t mess with me!”
I also have a few magnets, mostly of the clip variety. One clip holds the good pizza delivery menu (a place of honor in our kitchen), and another is designated as the postcard clip – if you send me a postcard, it stays in the clip until the next time I get a postcard, two days, two weeks, two years … anything’s possible.