---
title: Personal Food / Fridge Cleanout
description: "## How it works This applies to refrigerators and freezers. For all food you bring to Cowork Frederick and don’t intend to share: - Grab a piece of tape from the roll on the fridge door. - Write your name…"
url: "https://coworkfrederick.com/docs/personal-food-fridge-cleanout/"
updated: "2026-09-16"
category: "How It Works / Kitchens & Break Rooms"
---

# Personal Food / Fridge Cleanout

## How it works

This applies to refrigerators and freezers.

For all food you bring to Cowork Frederick and don’t intend to share:

- Grab a piece of tape from the roll on the fridge door.
- Write your name on the tape and affix it to your food.
- Any food without a name on it is up for grabs.
- Each Friday morning, the tape color changes.
- Each Friday, around 5 pm, all food without the new tape color is discarded or moved to shared community food, at Cowork Frederick's discretion.
- Any food that appears spoiled (moldy, etc.) will be discarded immediately. We won't wait until Friday.

This is a perfect opportunity to exercise [Playground Rule](https://coworkfrederick.com/docs/playground-rules/) #1: BE NICE. When bringing in personal food, be considerate about how much space you take. Leave room for others.

Also, be mindful of when you bring food in. We will clear things out every Friday evening, so bring food you want to store for a few days early in the week. Stocking up on a Thursday will not serve you well.

This system is intended to make it easy to know what’s what and to make it easy to know what should be cleared out each week. It was “borrowed” from fellow coworking space, [Indy Hall](http://indyhall.org/) in Philly. Big thanks to them for the idea!

To learn more about how food and drink at Cowork Frederick, like where it comes from and how it's funded, go [here](https://coworkfrederick.com/docs/break-room-food/).

## FAQ's:

1. **Why are we doing this?** It's a way of managing how much food is stored, so that there's room for others - especially important as our membership grows. It's also a way to make sure the food in the fridge is fresh.
2. **How did this come about?** Putting your name on personal food has been a thing since we opened in 2012. We have also cleared food out of the fridges (and freezers) from the beginning. To make that more predictable for people, we started doing it on a specific day of the week back in 2023. We got the tape-color idea from another coworking space. We thought it was a genius way to make the clean out routine clear for members and easy for staff.
3. **Is this new?** Only a little bit. The clearing of personal food is not new. The request that you only bring personal food that you'll eat in the next few days is not new. The only new thing is that we swap the tape weekly.
4. **When does the tape color change?** Every Friday morning.
5. **When do you clear out the fridges?** Every Friday evening, around 5 pm.
6. **What does clearing out the fridges mean?**A staff member will identify food that does not have the new color of tape on it and will, at their discretion, either remove the tape, thus making the food available to anyone in the community, or will compost it.
7. **Why Friday?** Friday was chosen because there are groups who have big meetings with food over the weekend and need mostly empty fridges. Also, Friday is our busiest day for coworking. If someone accidentally leaves leftover lunch they meant to take home, it will still be there for them Monday (if they put their name on it using the tape mounted to the fridge).
8. **Does that mean something I bring in Thursday might get cleared?** Yes. That would be true no matter what day of the week we do this. Best not to stock up on a Thursday.
9. **Couldn't someone just put the new color of tape on their food?** Yes. And, if they do, we'll at least know they are paying attention to the food and haven't forgotten about it. But, we ask that you still only bring in food you'll eat in the next few days. If we see a pattern emerging, we'll talk to you about it.