How to move an actor 'naturally'

Say I have a fridge. I want to put an item into the fridge. If it’s full, the item falls out; if there’s enough space, it goes in.

How would I accomplish this automatically using code? My initial idea was to apply force so that physics can kind of just throw the item in, and while this kind of works, it’s not natural (and throwing may also cause rebound and I don’t want to be setting exact force values for every fridge of a different size)–as a human being I would try to actually place the item on the rack, push it in slightly if needed, etc. Is there any way to emulate this kind of behaviour without user input?