It’s become aware to me that different households have different rules on the fridge. At my house, theres an open fridge, meaning anyone can take stuff out of it. However, if you have leftovers, they are usually yours, unless your relinquish them to someone else. How do you work this out?
I’ve become increasingly aware of fridges at other places, namely apartments where my friends are starting to move to. It seems that one thing holds true- drinks are always fair game.
However, some rules are different (and probably determined by house rules- i.e who lives there) like the leftover rule. Usually you wouldn’t touch anyones leftovers, but I have seen in some rare occasions this happen.
Another thing is the rule about who buys the food. If you are living with people, you are expected to contribute food in the order of this: 100 x 1/n. n is a counting number. So if three people live at your residence, you are expected to buy 33.33% of the food, 4 people would mean 25% of the food, and so on.
The thing that messes up this equation? Outsiders. There’s no way to figure out how to do this. For example, if you invite some over for dinner, then you invited, so everything if fair game.
If someone happens to come over, what do you do? A friend wouldn’t charge another friend for something taken from the fridge. But how can this be solved.
Perhaps this is what happens in most 3 world countries, they are just too generous to their friends, and end up with less food themselves. Maybe the answer is that the friend has to replace the food, but by any means. So I mean, they could give you a cow for beef they ate (which would probably end up costing way more) or just give you the equivalent in beef back. They could grow corn to replace what they ate out of your freezer.
But then again…what’s food between friends?