I don’t know if it’s true, but I thought I read somewhere that opening and closing the refrigerator wastes energy.  Maybe that’s why, the other day when we were unloading groceries, I caught myself trying to minimize this waste.

Here is the layout of our kitchen.  We usually bring in all the groceries from the car and put them down in the Grocery Unloading Area.  From here, we grab a handful of items put them away.  If some go in the fridge, we open the fridge and put them away.

Kitchen layout

If opening and closing a refrigerator incurs an overhead, just like opening and closing a network or database connection incurs an overhead, this is very inefficient.  So I found myself bringing refrigerated items near the fridge, in a Refrigerator Staging Area, or refrigerated items buffer, if you will.  This way, I could quickly put away all fridge items, flushing the buffer, and only open the refrigerator once, saving the setup and teardown refrigerator opening costs.

Too much of a stretch?  I deal with this kind of crap all day long, so maybe this was inevitable.