If you have somehow got an odor that won’t leave your fridge, let’s talk about the EASY ways to get that smell out (beyond buying a new fridge — because frankly guys, that’s tempting after the week I’ve had nasty ice for).
How do I know so much about cleaning out nasty fridges? Well, I had smelly fridge and my ice tasted like plastic somehow (not great for Arizona summers). After learning a lot about how fridges circulate air and smells, along with what all the experts say to use against it — my ice now tastes fine and there’s no funky smell to the fridge. Huzzah. I want that for you too (because bad ice sucks).
FIRST STEP: Your first step is to pull EVERYTHING out. That’s right, you heard me — EVERYTHING. We went so far as to replace the liners in our produce drawer, but somehow we missed that one of the bottoms of the apples laying on it was MOLDY and just put it back in.
Take it out, look at it, smell it. Toss if in question.
BTW just casually looking for some kitchen fixes, check out these posts too:
- 5 Tips for Easy Kitchen Cabinet Organization
- 3 Kitchen Sink Hacks You Need
- Decluttering Your Kitchen
- Organize Your Kitchen: Genius ideas for your most-used room
- Kitchen Organization Hacks: Organized storage for small kitchens & cupboards!
AND, don’t miss my weekly cleaning printable:
Step #2: Clean everything with vinegar water.
I’m a HUGE fan of using vinegar in my cleaning because it’s a GREAT deodorizer and most of all, it’s cheap.
I use about 1 part vinegar to 5 cups water, along with a drop of dish soap in my cleaner I use (I eyeball this). Sometimes I throw in some essential oils for fun too.
For me (because everyone’s abilities/fridges are different) that means I:
- Emptied the entire fridge & freezer. We used our garage fridge and some coolers to keep the food cold (we have one of these that actually keeps our frozen stuff 100% fine – we actually have to defrost our freezer in our garage every few months so we’re used to this process).
- Pulled off all the liners (we use this stuff to line our shelves so if something drips it catches on that vs the actual shelf) and washed them with vinegar spray and then hot soapy water
- Pulled out all the shelves, sprayed them down with the vinegar spray and then washed with hot, soapy water in the sink.
- Sprayed down the entire fridge with the vinegar spray and wiped it all down.
I then repeated the same process in the freezer (and other extra drawers you have).
In most fridge/freezer combos it’s running the same air between the cold freezer to help cool down the fridge as well — and since they share air exchange those nasty smells can be hiding ANYWHERE in that thing.
We also ran our ice maker on “max ice” to run a few cycles of ice while we were cleaning it. We dumped all the ice out of it (watered our plants, I bet they loved it during the hot AZ summer), and dumped a couple extra loads too to make sure it had cleaned itself out.
(Our ice maker is contained within the sides of the fridge, so we’re unable to actually clean the ICE maker without undoing a lot of screws…. so this is going to have to do for now).
We did clean the bin that holds and dispensers the ice too. Again, vinegar, and hot soapy water.
Ok, so everything’s clean — what do you do now?
We chose to take an hour with nothing in it and we filled the fridge with a bunch of newspaper and baking soda.
Yes, newspaper. Just crumple it in a ball.
Everyone says that this is the BEST deodorizer you can use against smells in your fridge. In fact, if I have the issue again and don’t have time to do the full clean (this takes a while, I’m not going to lie) I will likely to put some newspaper in the fridge to see how it does…. along with some….
Baking Soda.
Hopefully you know that vinegar and baking soda are two of the very best deodorizers out there. I poured baking soda (the same kind I use in cookies or in my wash) into shallow bowls and placed them all throughout the fridge and freezer.
We chose to just let it sit like that for an hour (like in the photo above).
The shelves were all out, it was all clean and we just left it on and circulating.
A lot of tutorials say to turn off thr fridge while you clean it up but we did not do that. We probably ran the risk of getting electrocuted, but we live in Arizona and I needed to put the food back in soon so I left it on for the time we were cleaning it. I also wanted the ice maker to run a few times before we were “done”.
I saw a lot of people encouraging you to deodorize with citrus peels, coffee grounds, activated charcoal or drops of vanilla. Frankly, we didn’t have most of those things, and I really want my fridge to smell like nothing — not vanilla or citrus. So we went with what we have.
And then it sits.
What Causes Bad Fridge Odors?
While we’re waiting, you might be wondering, Hilary — what did your fridge smell like? What caused all of this?
I honestly have no idea. Which makes me the most angry. On my initial clean-out a week ago I did see some eggs had frozen in our garage but we’d brought them into the house. I felt like the eggs tasted funny when I ate them — so, I thought that was it and threw that package of eggs away.
But, the odor remained….
I then found a small Tupperware of canned beans that were leftover. Normally, I coat mine in oil so they stay good a bit longer, but that wasn’t done here and the beans were NASTY. However, only nasty when you opened the container….
I thought that was it, so I tossed those. G’Bless my trash can and the garbage men out there.
But the smell remained.
I smelled it a little when I opened the fridge to grab something. The butter had absorbed the smell so I could taste it when I had toast…. But I MOSTLY tasted it in our ice.
Our ice is in the door of our fridge. Honestly, if I lived ANYWHERE else I’d never have a water dispenser but during the summer our water tastes directly like mold, so I got a fridge with a water dispenser and ice maker in the door. Would I do it again? I doubt it. It’s been troublesome for sure….
If you’re thinking, Hilary this is so helpful to get step-by-step plans that a mere mortal can carry-out! I’m here to say I KNOW! So many of these plans involved mostly throwing all the food away — and I knew we didn’t want to resort to that, if we could find something else to fix it.
The Organized Home is like this fridge tutorial, but for organizing.
It’s a class perfect for people who feel like….
- You’re always having to clean or organize instead of sitting on the couch
- You don’t like having people over because it takes you hours to tidy up
- You live in fear of losing something important — a library book, birth certificate or keys?
The Organized Home helps you by:
- Getting your brain in gear by knowing WHY you want to organize a certain area
- Giving you systems that work that you can tailor to your own home.
- Encouragement to get up and actually do it — it’s like having a buddy with you!
Use coupon code PC10 to get 10% off when you join today!
Ok, so after it’s sit — what do you then?
You put the food back in. It really seemed like in the tutorials I read, people wanted you to keep the food out for like a full day. For us, a lot of it didn’t fit in our extra fridge or a cooler — so we only felt good about leaving it out for an hour (don’t worry — we put anything that we were extra worried about spoiling in coolers or our extra fridge). SO, that’s what we did.
I checked each item as I pulled it out, and again as I put it back in.
Anything that had even the SLIGHEST smell, I tossed it if I didn’t have a plan for it, or I put it in a Ziploc (looking at you half onion). I was sniffing many things this morning. I felt like a bloodhound!
I’m still waiting to dump another batch of ice, but then I’m hopeful it’s done for good after this.
I DID smell the smell before, but I don’t smell it now, even with everything in the fridge — so, fingers crossed.
I have a filter in my fridge (a manufacture one), but I am also going to add fridge baking soda boxes to both the fridge and the freezer to catch orders as well moving forward.
Would you add anything else to this plan — let me know in the comments! Either way I hope your fridge is smell-free once you complete these steps too!
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