If the leftover food was well-forgotten at the back of your refrigerator, you may expect the disgusting smell coming into your life and annoying you for as long as you let it stay in your fridge. And if something goes bad and leaks… Yikes!
Sometimes even finding what’s making your fridge stink so bad may turn into mission impossible. But what about getting the odors out of your fridge and making it smell all nice and fresh again? That’s a whole other story.
As a smelly fridge appears in everyone’s life at least once, it’s quite useful to learn how to clean it out and get rid of the unbearable smell in it to make your fridge feel nice and save the rest of the good food from going bad sooner than expected.
How to get rid of smell in fridge
- The first thing you need to do is to get a large bucket and fill it with ice, as you’re about to empty your fridge and conduct a throughout inspection of all the food that’s been stored in it. But before that, make sure to unplug your fridge.
- After the perpetrator of the bad smell incident is detected, throw it away and look through the fridge to make sure that it didn’t manage to leak somewhere.
- Take every single shelve and drawer out of your fridge and wash each of them with room temperature water and a soapy sponge. Let them air dry or wipe them dry before putting back into the refrigerator.
- Pour some water into a large bowl, add a few drops of dishwashing soap into it and wash the inside of your fridge. Pay special attention to different dents, ‘ribs’
- If you didn’t manage to remove the door shelves from your fridge and wash them in the sink, don’t forget to wash them just like the walls. Don’t miss a chance to wipe the door seals and the fridge’s outside too.
- Dump the dirty soapy water out, wash the sponge and fill the bowl with fresh clean water. Go over the fridge’s inside once again to get rid of the soapy residue on its walls and door shelves.
- Reinstall the shelves and smell your fridge. The matter is that if the smelly item was left inside the refrigerator for too long, the smell could penetrate deeper into the fridge’s walls.
- If that’s the case, you’ll have to let your fridge air out for a couple of days. Meanwhile, you’ll have to store all the food (including freezer items) in the cooler.
- In addition to that, you may use commercial or homemade fridge deodorizers (check out the recipes down below) to speed up the process, as well as keep the smell out of your fridge on the day to day basis.
- Once the smell is out of your fridge, make sure to take a couple of preventive measures not to end up with a stinky refrigerator once again.
Keeping your leftovers at the front of the fridge shelves, labeling them to know when it’s time to throw them in the trash, storing items in containers with lids, being smart and moderate with your grocery shopping and cleaning your fridge regularly will help you keep your fridge fresh and in order.
Natural homemade fridge deodorizers
- Baking soda is a like a universal cleaning magician, as it may solve pretty much any cleaning ‘riddle’ in your house.
As far as bed fridge smell goes, you may remove it by putting a bowl with baking soda on the middle shelve in your fridge and letting it stay in there and absorb the odors for a full day. - Sprinkle the shelves of your refrigerator with fresh ground coffee or place a couple of flat plates with coffee on them and leave it there for a day or so.
Coffee should absorb all the smells, as well as leave a nice aroma in your fridge. (Obviously, you can’t use that coffee to prepare a drink afterwards.) - Sprinkle a couple of cotton balls with your favorite (preferably citrus) essential oils or soak them in vanilla extract.
Leave the balls in the fridge for 10-14 hours to make it smell like heaven.
If none of the tips above managed to work for you, make sure to leave a fridge cleaning request on HireRush.com.
Our appliance cleaners will do their best to kick that stubborn smell out from your fridge.
