A Look Inside the Fridges of Australian Uni Students

For a lot of us, university is the time to leave home and realise you can't shop with any sense of forward planning, or cook, or even slightly clean. So you survive on weird pastas and mi goreng, along with eight of your other student buddies and the fridge fills up with garbage and things in the back start to marinate.

Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe you're all studying dentistry and you keep the fridge clean, or fine arts and you only have goon or mustard. See, that's the thing about a fridge in a share-house: you can get a sense of what people study, the ratio of female housemates to male, and the current generosity of Centrelink. You can learn a lot from a fridge.

With this in mind, we asked to see some student fridges around Melbourne.

Justin, 23, studying Media / Communications at RMIT

VICE: Hey Justin! I've heard you have an obsession with kale, even though you're holding coriander?
Justin: Yeah, I love kale, it's super cheap and goes with anything. Especially eggs.

And you never get over it?
It does make me feel a bit sick because it's all that I eat for breakfast and I'm sick of it. I'm a creature of habit.

Your fridge is pretty full, are you a foodie of some sort?
I'm not a foodie by any means. I love to cook but most of the food belongs to my housemates. The alcohol is probably mine, I spend more money on booze than food.

If you were on a desert island and only thing you had was kale, would you know how to make alcohol out of it?
I'd have to die because I have no idea how to make alcohol from kale.

Rad, 28, studying Visual Arts and Gender Studies at Victoria University

Hey Rad, rad name, great for a Footscray local. You live in a Mecca of cheap eatings.
Yeah roaming the streets of Scray, diggin' it here! I must admit, I don't buy so much groceries, because eating out is fairly cheap. I think my budget is around 30 bucks a week and then we share stuff at the house with others. I eat out once a day, it's around 10-15 bucks and delish!

You look like a guitar fiddling guy. Band members eat together a lot, right?
Yup, we have a project with my flatmate called "Death Shakes," which is an exercise in telepathic communication meaning I'm improvising with a guitar and my flatmate is reading poetry. We live together, play in a band together, eat together, we're not together, but support each other.

Marle, 25, studying Marketing at RMIT

Hey Marle, you have a clean minimalist home. Do you cook?
Oh thank you! No, not really, I'm always on the go and then I just tend to eat out. Home I love to use the blender, different soups are my favourite.

Wow that sounds busy! What do you do?
We're running a clothing store called "Homecoming Intl" with my friend. Lot of meetings and decision-making happens on this kitchen table. Our coder lives also here, so it's really handy.

It seems that kitchen is the heart of the home for many?
Yes, that's definitely the case here too. It's not used for cooking so much, but the kitchen is the meeting point.

How is it so clean here? And how you manage that with your schedule?
Well, it's quite minimalist, there's not so much to clean and we all wipe after we go. Simple. I get up early in the morning and work fairly late at night. Efficient.

Oskar 25, studying Architecture at RMIT

Hey Oskar. What a neat and sharp flat. Really graphic lines. You guys must be some sort of designers?
Yes, all three of us are in creative fields. It's two architects and one art director. We like it functional, cutting the noise. When we moved in we didn't have anything here for two years. We sat on the heather grey whole floor carpet and ate our dinner.

This flat is really central, how do you manage with eating costs here?
We live directly next to Victoria Markets. We feel really privileged to be able to shop fresh produce and move without a car. We shop couple times a week for about $50 in total for us three and then we cook home quite often. One of us is vegetarian so it's only veggies home. Our favourite now is Mejadra, which is a traditional middle Eastern dish with rice, lentils, and fried onion.

How about you two, how do you fulfill your meat cravings?
When we go out for dinner, mostly during the weekend, we eat burgers, Greek, and the Italian place next door. Pretty carb heavy with some meat. It's more like a luxurious thing, when you don't eat it daily.

Ewa, 20, exchange student from London, studying Creative Direction and Styling at Whitehouse Institute of Design

Hey Ewa, you're an exchange student from London. Is there a big difference with your eating habits here compared to home?
Yeah it's pretty different. Here in Melbourne I definitely cook less and eat out more. I'm vegan and there are so many good vegan places in Melbourne so it's very tempting to eat out. When I make something at home it tends to be simple stuff like toasties with avo, hummus, and veggies. Cereals and toast, that's like 90 percent of what I eat at home.

The kitchen here is quite dirty and there seems to be a population of flies occupying the common space. Why is it so dirty? Does it bother you?
No one cares. It's a converted warehouse so it is not really a classic house. There's been slow progress though. When I moved in couple of months ago it was even worse. Junk piling up everywhere. You get used to everything and after a while you don't see it that much anymore, but flies are still effin' annoying.

If you had a date with an alien, what would you eat?
On earth? If so, then Mexican or Indian. Lots of bits n' pieces and we could ditch the cutlery.

Yes, there's probably not a lot of clean cutlery around.

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