For those of us who have ever lived in a shared space know the sheer terror of the shared refrigerator. Not only do you go to your fridge to find that the food that you have been saving has miraculously vanished, but roommates tend to leave food in the fridge for so long, that even a forensics team doesn’t want to touch it.

Designer Stefan Buchberger used to live with a “dirty fridge in a shared flat”, so he invented a device called the Flatshare that allows roommates to share a fridge while keeping their individual space.

The Flatshare has a base station as well as four stackable modules that fit together like puzzle pieces. This makes the Flatshare very easy to transport when moving. The user has the option of putting colorful skins or a whiteboard on the modules.

The Flatshare is one out of nine finalists in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition. This is the sixth year of the global contest, which has had 600 entries from 49 countries this year.

Considering that I have seen the Flatshare on several other gadget blogs, but no sign of the others in this Electrolux competition, I can only assume that the Flatshare is looking like the winner this year. If it does win, then perhaps the Flatshare will be in many a shared home in the future.

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