Now that a new law finally requires landlords to source units, renters in the city reflect on what they went through just to keep their food fresh.
What’s the most cumbersome object you’ve ever had to schlep in a move? For me, it’s probably a sectional or a mattress. Once in college, I moved a futon by myself, and, failing to lash it properly to the bed of my 1985 El Camino, the cushion took flight on the freeway, very luckily coming to a soft landing on the shoulder. (It did eventually make it into my house, somehow unscathed, and without harming a soul.)
Thankfully I’ve never had the pleasure of heaving a refrigerator or stove, though, and, if you live in the U.S. and rent, chances are you haven’t, either. But for Los Angeleno renters, moving a fridge from place to place, not to mention sourcing, maintaining, or installing one, has been their responsibility—an odd rite of passage in the city, like the brokerage fee was to New York. Some know all too well the song and dance of the secondhand "fridge economy": scouring Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for a unit, or hitting up a Taskrabbit for a repair. Others have had to pass up that dream apartment—the perfect spot, except critically there wasn’t space for a fridge at all. And then there are times when you buy a used unit and, to your surprise, get to clean out someone else’s mess.
But these odd rituals and runarounds that belong to Los Angeles will soon be a thing of the past, now that a new 2026 law requires the city’s landlords to provide renters with refrigerators. And as anyone who’s rented there might tell you, good riddance. Here, six Los Angelenos reminisce about the time (or two) when they had the privilege of figuring out a fridge.
Does a Used Fridge Really Ever Feel Clean?
My boyfriend, Jeremy, and I were living in North Carolina but were looking to move to Los Angeles. He went ahead of me and started touring apartments and sending me videos, and when I watched one for the apartment we currently live in, I noticed there was no dishwasher. We hemmed and hawed about whether that was a dealbreaker, but decided to sign the lease, and a month later, I moved out there with all my belongings packed in a U-Haul.
When we got to the apartment, we did a walkthrough, and they had us sign a checklist of amenities. We were standing in the kitchen filling it out, but it wasn’t until we got to a bullet point about a refrigerator did we see that it said "n/a," and realized there was no fridge—we literally whipped our heads around to find a blank space where a unit should have been. It was obviously too late to change anything, though, so we signed the checklist and went to Facebook Marketplace for a used fridge.
We found one in Hollywood, and my hubris (and empty wallet from having already rented a U-Haul to drive across the country) made me believe that I could fit the fridge into my SUV. We bought a furniture dolly and got the refrigerator out of this guy’s apartment, and when we tipped it backwards into my car, gelatinous old wine goo started to dump out of the bottom spill tray. We just barely got my SUV closed with a bungee cord, and hauled the fridge back to the house, where I sat in the driveway and finished cleaning out the goo.
I got the fridge in the house and plugged it in, and thank God, it worked, because I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to get a different fridge. Long story long, I still have the fridge, but I hate it because the door doesn’t always shut all the way, and after cleaning out a full bottle’s worth of red wine goo from its crevices, it never truly feels clean in there. — Amber Mooers, ceramics artist
The Perfect Apartment Exists—But It Might Not Have Space for a Fridge
Unfortunately this law came about a year too late for me. Last year, I found what I thought was my dream apartment—a unit inside a Spanish Revival building blanketed with bougainvillea. It was under my budget and charming, with arched thresholds, built-in alcoves, and a plastered-over fireplace with a tiled base where I imagined placing tall votive candles. All that was missing was a refrigerator and a kitchen big enough to actually put one; the stove and the sink took up essentially all of the space in the tiny galley kitchen.
But I really wanted to make this apartment work. I brainstormed. Maybe my new fridge could go in the sliver of unoccupied space under the cabinet. I imagined buying a mini Frigidaire, making it my entire personality, and then running the cord over the sink (excellent) to reach the only outlet. The fridge would block my access to the sink, but whatever! There are bathroom sinks for a reason, right? But unfortunately, I had briefly dated someone in L.A. who lived that mini-fridge life and I knew it wasn’t for me.
What was my alternative? I imagined broaching the subject with the hypothetical Taskrabbit standing in my future doorway. Here is my adult-person refrigerator. Perhaps we install it in the bedroom between the bookcase and the closet. I showed the listing to the Responsible Adults and handy types in my life for a solution I may have missed. The answer was clear, though: not the right place for me. — Grace Bernard, editorial strategist and Dwell contributor
Congratulations, You’re the Proud New Owner of a Pre-Owned GE
My previous apartment came with a pretty dingy fridge that was used, and didn’t have a lot of space. I was complaining to some friends of mine and they were, like, Oh, we just got a new fridge. Come and take our old one. And so I got that fridge and replaced my small dingy one. But then I bought another one, and I had to essentially have a talk with my landlord to be like, Hey, I’m buying a new fridge, and I’m taking it with me when I leave. It’s funny to even have to negotiate that, you know? Like, I’m either selling the new one I bought to my landlord, or taking it with me. And I’ve hung the new one ever since.
Because of the law before now, there’s been this crazy used fridge market. The unit for my woodshop, I ended up finding a guy on Craigslist who brought it over and set it up for $150. It was a pretty good deal for a boring old GE situation. But if you look at Craigslist, there are absolutely people who make a living selling fridges. Any metropolitan area might have something similar, but it feels especially crazy here.
And then if a refrigerator breaks, that’s all of a sudden very much your responsibility and not the landlord at all. With my last refrigerator, something was leaking and something stopped heating properly or whatever, and I had to find a random person—I don’t know if I went to Thumbtack, or Craigslist, or what. But some random guy came over and was just like, Sure, I can repair it for a minimum of $400, but if you’re gonna spend that, you should just buy a new fridge. — Adam Christgau, furniture designer and drummer
"I had started dating my now-husband, and he had to look up videos on how to fix the freezer. That’s part of our love story, I guess."
—Hannah Go, designer
Assembly Is Definitely Required
My apartment two years ago didn’t have a fridge, so my roommate and I found one on Facebook Marketplace. It didn’t fit into our car, so we had to take the doors off, but it still didn’t fit right. We had to drive at like five miles per hour with the trunk fully open and us clutching the fridge from inside the car, hoping it wouldn’t slide out. When we finally got it to the apartment and got it inside, we attached the doors on the wrong side. So if you were in the kitchen and you tried to open it, it would hit the kitchen counter.
At that point we were so over the whole process of getting that fridge in there that we just left it that way, so for the entire year that we lived in that apartment, you had to do this weird shimmy between the wall and the kitchen counter to get into the fridge. And you could only access the inside through, like, a 45-degree sliver. It was ridiculous. — Sergio Cana
Pay It Back, With Interest
I was living in South L.A., and my roommate and I didn’t have a fridge for our apartment. We were super cheap, so we went on Craigslist and got one from Baldwin Hills with my truck. But we ended up moving to Koreatown a year later, and that place didn’t have a fridge, either. And it was sort of a weird situation leaving the other apartment. We couldn’t really take the fridge with us because now there were other people living there that were going to stay, and it got complicated.
For the new apartment in Koreatown, I just went to Sears to buy a refrigerator. I didn’t like paying cash, so I opened a Sears credit card and bought the cheapest fridge, which I think was probably still like $600, and made monthly payments. I think it was like $60 a month for six years. It was great. [laughs] A total rip—I paid so much interest on that fridge.
What’s interesting about this fridge thing is that there’s a whole used fridge economy, and a fridge mover economy, in Los Angeles that is now going to be totally toast. There are full on car lots for refrigerators, and there are these guys that are like piano movers, but for fridges. — Cesar Maria, songwriter and producer
In Your Twenties, Luxury (and Love) Is a Working Refrigerator
When I first moved to Highland Park, my first apartment that I ever lived in by myself was essentially a studio plus—like a studio with a bonus room. It was a second-floor walk-up in this building that was kind of Brownstone-esque, very East Coast. I had to buy a fridge but did not have the money, because I was so afraid of having to pay the $1,300 a month in rent, which is comical to think back on now. I was like, well, I’m just not gonna have a fridge until I can figure out how to have one. Around that time I went to a casino and gambled for the first time in my life, and ended up winning $200. I used it to buy a refrigerator. And I actually had enough money left over to pay a Taskrabbit to haul it up the stairs with a dolly.
Another time, in my mid-twenties, I got a second-floor apartment near the mouth of Chavez Ravine by Dodger Stadium for a couple of years. I had a roommate and we were really jazzed. It was way nicer than anything we’d lived in before, and there was parking. Considering our means, it was sweet living, but of course, the apartment didn’t have a fridge. We had a small one delivered from a used store down the street at Sunset and Echo Park, and to get it up to the second floor, we used a couple of my skateboards to wheel it up as best we could, pushing and pulling it. It was a beautiful fridge, but it broke down all the time. We had to YouTube how to fix it more than once. The nice thing about old fridges is that none of them have computers or sensors or anything, so there was a lot we could repair ourselves. I had started dating my now-husband at the time, and he had to look up videos on how to fix the freezer. That’s part of our love story, I guess. — Hannah Go, designer
This Is Normal
When my wife and I moved to Glendale from Orange, where we were staying with my parents for a little bit, our new rental apartment didn’t have a refrigerator. I was like, Oh, I’ll just figure it out. I was talking to my cousin about it, which is when I became aware that landlords don’t have to provide refrigerators. He told me he happened to have an extra one lying around at one of his properties in East L.A., but that it was probably moldy since it had been sitting outside. He wasn’t even sure if it was working, but just offered it up to us.
I have a RAV4, and my wife and I and my cousin went to his property to pick up the fridge, and it was a puzzle getting it in. I had to put the back seats down, and slid up the front passenger seat. Luckily it was a smaller unit, and not too heavy. Getting it into our apartment on the third floor was a whole other puzzle, because there was no elevator. We brought a dolly, but it was actually easier to carry it up three flights of stairs.
When we got it to our place, it definitely needed a little help in terms of cleanup. There was dirt and mold, and it was basically black. I had to research how to clean a fridge. I got vinegar and baking soda and, like, all-purpose spray that gets rid of oils and stuff like that. We spent a whole afternoon, probably a good two hours, cleaning the fridge. There was even mold in the vents.
The funny thing is, when we were looking at apartments, some had refrigerators and some didn’t, but we weren’t even thinking about that. We were more concerned about getting the place we wanted. It just feels funny that a fridge is not even a factor for choosing an apartment. That was completely normalized. — Askia Vargas Toure, musician and educator
Related Reading:
Forget "Fridgescaping"—It’s Okay for Your Refrigerator to Be a Place of Chaos
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