Refrigerator

In The Sims Series, a refrigerator is an appliance from which Sims can take food from. Beginning with The Sims 2: Seasons, Sims can also store leftover food in refrigerators to eat later.

The Sims
In The Sims the household loses an amount of money each time a Sim takes food from their refrigerator, but refrigerators are always full. The quality of the refrigerator will affect how satisfying a meal is; more expensive refrigerators will produce more satisfying meals.

The Sims 2
Refrigerators in The Sims 2 ship with a full food supply. As the food in a refrigerator is used, a family member must buy more, either at a grocery store or by calling for delivery. In The Sims 2, each unit of food costs §2, though food bought from a Sim-owned business may cost more. Sims will usually put groceries in the refrigerator, but may put them on a counter or other surface. If this happens, the player can click on the basket and select "Put Away". If a Sim bought groceries from more than one display, whether in a business or on a normal community lot, there will be a basket for each display the Sim bought from. However, only the first basket will automatically be put away or put down; others will have to be removed from the Sim's inventory and put away. While buying from multiple displays, especially in a business, adds a touch of realism, there is no other reason to do it.

Starting with The Sims 2: Seasons, refrigerators can store leftovers, which will stay good indefinitely. Seasons also allows refrigerators to be stocked with produce, which will also stay good indefinitely.

In The Sims 2: Open for Business, refrigerators on owned community lots do not need to be stocked, but the business will be charged every time a Sim takes food from them. Likewise, in The Sims 2: University, a secret society will be charged whenever its refrigerator is used, but the refrigerator will always be fully stocked. Also, the food supply of a refrigerator in a dormitory cafeteria will not diminish when food is made by the cafeteria attendant, but will diminish when dorm residents take food from it.

All refrigerators in The Sims 2 have the same Hunger value, but the more expensive models will hold more food than the cheaper ones. If a refrigerator is stocked with produce, food will be cooked with it and have a higher hunger value.

The Sims 3
In The Sims 3, ingredients can be bought, caught, or grown, and stored in a refrigerator. If an ingredient that's needed to cook a meal is missing from both the refrigerator and the Sim's inventory, in order to prepare the meal, the Sim will purchase the ingredient for more money than it would cost to buy it from the grocery store.

Unlike The Sims 2, in which leftovers never spoil, leftovers will eventually spoil in The Sims 3, and the quality/price of the refrigerator has an impact on how long leftovers can be stored before spoiling. Spoiled meals can be cleaned out of the refrigerator by Sims or the maid. Spoiled food in a refrigerator gives a negative moodlet to Sims just as left out spoiled food does: they become Disgusted.

The food stored in the fridges in The Sims 3 doesn't seem to depend on the fridge that's on the lot. For example, if the player first deletes a fridge then buys a new fridge, the new fridge will have all the food that was in the old fridge. Also, if there are multiple fridges on the lot, they all have the same contents; removing one item from one fridge removes it from all of the other fridges.

The Sims 2 (Console)
In The Sims 2 series for consoles, meals must be created by combining ingredients, and cheaper refrigerators give fewer ingredient options than more expensive ones. The only way to obtain ingredients would be to grow them, to harvest them from a fish tank, or to purchase them directly from the refrigerator. Each ingredient is priced differently and affects bladder and hunger urgencies differently.