Photo: Thinkstock

If you're like my mother, you keep all food except bananas in the refrigerator, and have a strict toss-it-after-two-days policy. If you're French, on the other hand, your fridge is set at a barely cool temperature, and eggs and butter sit out on the counter, right alongside the brie and baguette. Where's the happy medium? A new infographic on healthy living site Hella Wella explains how long all different kinds of foods will keep, refrigerated, from soup to lunch meat; while artist Jihyun Ryou's Save Food From the Fridge project is finding untraditional ways to store foods to help them last longer.

So what's the best way to store eggs? Hella Wella's infographic says they're fine in the fridge for three weeks. But Ryou prefers to keep them out. She explains that an egg has millions of holes in its shell, so it absorbs odors easily--leading to an off taste if you store it in the same closed space where you keep onions, ground beef and blue cheese. Ryou's solution: A shelf hung on a wall, with a clear cup of water hanging off of it, so you can test an egg's freshness (it's best when it sinks).

I'm taking advice from both the chilled and non-chilled camps, printing out the handy infographic and taping it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet. But Ryou's suggestion to store apples and potatoes together is one smart step I'll definitely take: the ethylene gas the apples emit prevents potatoes from sprouting. Brie and baguettes, though? They're easy to decide about: they don't stick around long enough in my house for storage to be an issue.

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