Our local grocery store's produce section has a few areas of refrigerated produce along the walls–mostly "wet" vegetables like lettuce, squash, peppers, green beans, etc. The rest, in the middle of the produce section is simply on shelves in bins, like potatoes, onions, corn and bananas.
For the most part, our home storage tends to follow the store's–we keep lettuce in the crisper and onions out.
However, there are a few pieces of produce that tend to generate some controversy in our house, and they tend to be small and round, like grapes, cherries, and berries. The questionable item this week is blueberries. My tendency is to follow the store's practice of leaving this out, whereas my wife seems convinced they will rot in a matter of hours and insists they should be refrigerated.
I'm more or less satisfied with refrigerating them–as long as it won't cause a problem. I've heard that some items will actually go soft faster, or lose flavor, if stored cold.
Best Answer
Just to clarify a couple of things that others have said -
The skin of any vegetable or fruit has natural defences against microorganisms, particularly moulds - if you wash your food the minute you get it home, you reduce its keeping qualities. Wash things as needed, immediately before using or eating them, and they will keep longer than if you wash them in bulk.
Never neglect the washing, because they may have been sprayed with something to improve their shelf life - and remember this includes things like the peel of citrus fruits, which is often ignored by the pros.
It is a fact that chilling foods can initiate mould growth, which will manifest itself quite quickly if the temperature is raised. If food was chilled when you bought it, keep it that way and the mould growth will be slowed down. If you put it in the chiller, keep it there until you use it.
If you bought food at room temperature and it quickly goes mouldy, you can usually bet that it was chilled in transit.