Why Mid-Century Fridges Were Smarter Than The Ones We Buy Now

In 2025, refrigerators can track contents and make you a grocery list based on what you need, automatically refill your pitcher of water, and provide calendar and weather updates — as well as your favorite playlists — from a touchscreen on the door. But can their shelves move to accommodate different items with the click of a button? Can those shelves swing out so you can get to every little thing even if it's fallen to the back? Can fridges today instantly and conveniently empty your ice tray, or convert produce storage into a case you can take right over to your meal-prep area? For all the modern technology we have now, it's not a stretch to argue that mid-century fridges wereת in factת the "smart refrigerators." 

On YouTube, HeyimNava posted a video of a 1963 refrigerator with aluminum — not plastic — shelves that could support 20 pounds of weight and that swung out for easy access. Instead of having to remove said shelves and reinsert them at different levels, these moved up via a one-handed button press. Its bottom drawer was actually multiple drawers that rotated like a lazy Susan. A circa-1956 refrigerator shared by a Redditor boasted slide-out shelves, plus an adjustable, enclosed produce compartment easily removed to carry elsewhere in the kitchen like the sink, and ice trays that emptied their cubes into an easy-to-grab drawer in one push. Essentially, mid-century refrigerators offered much more flexibility and convertibility than today's rigid fridges.

The pull-out shelves of mid-century refrigerators are such a brilliant feature, it's a wonder why they went away. Would we even need fridges to make our shopping lists if we could just as instantly see everything we have? In today's refrigerator, it's easy to lose track completely of different items — things go bad before we remember they're back there and we even sometimes waste money replacing something that was there all along. Even with today's list-populating feature, the AI technology that fuels it can get things wrong, and can't tailor lists to different things we might want or not want. A 1960s fridge made taking a visual inventory a snap.

Mid-century fridges were clearly built to last — one Redditor has an 80-year-old, still-working refrigerator. In terms of durability, clutter-free organization, and ease of movement during meal prep, mid-century refrigerators are easy to covet — on a Facebook post about vintage fridges, some recall hands-free doors you could open with your foot when your arms were full of groceries. There are reasons you don't want a true vintage fridge at home, though. They weren't designed for energy efficiency decades ago, and these appliances were even fatally toxic until the 1930s because their refrigerants consisted of dangerous chemicals. But you can customize your own contemporary fridge inspired by mid-century marvels — for example, use a lazy Susan to organize your fridge like a pro and easily access all its contents.