After Hurricane Ivan, power was off for 8 days, lost every thing in the freezer. I could not get home for a while, now the freezer has a horrible smell and I can't get it out. Tried bleaching the entire inside and still nothing. Also have baking soda inside.
Try using charcoal in the freezer. I have heard it works for those experiencing odor problems. I would also consider leaving the freezer door open as I was told a non-working freezer with closed doors will result in smells. Finally, my mom always recommends vinegar for everything. It is worth a try.
Turn the freezer off, open the lid and let it warm up.
Cleaners are not effective at freezing temperature. Use a sponge mop and scrub it out with an ammonia cleaner, but never mix it with bleach. That produces poison gas.
If that does not do the trick, then the cause of the smell is from the insulation or the mechanical compartment.
Do not use straight ammonia or strong solvents, because they make the plastic freezer liner brittle or damage it.
I had the same problem with my freezer after Ivan. I had lots of fish and shrimp in mine. What a stench!!
After emptying the contents, I turned off the power and used a strong solution of white vinegar and "mountain fresh" scented Clorox bleach in water. I wiped down everything, including the racks, and in the grooves of the door gasket.
After everything had dried, I placed some of the same scented Clorox into a glass dish and set it on a middle shelf. I turned the freezer onto the lowest setting and left it for 24 hours. It still had some lingering odor, so I left it one more day. Perfect! It's just like a brand new freezer!!
I used this same thing on my garage refrigerator with success, and my house refrigerator as well. It takes about a day for the bleach smell to dissipate, then you are back to normal!
Charcoal works great for getting rid of odors. Take regular charcoal, not briquettes, and put some in the freezer along with some crumpled up newspapers. Leave the door closed for a couple of days.
Clean the freezer with a paste made of baking soda and Lemon juice. rinse it thoroughly. After cleaning, put some large dishpans filled with charcoal briquets in and allow to sit for a couple of days. This should eliminate your odors
Charcoal does work well but make sure you DON'T use the self starting kind, just use the plain old briquets.
- Susan
I read somewhere just today that someone had a similar problem and what he/she did was to wipe out the inside with vanilla extract.
You might try an old pair of knee high socks, fill them with fresh dry ground coffee. Put the filled socks in the freezer with the door closed for several days...should do the trick!
Several years ago we had a power outage while we were out of town. When we got back our freezer was filled with rotten meat. We tried everything, and I do mean everything!! Nothing worked until we put saucers filled with cat litter on every shelf. We closed it up and did not open the door for about 3 or 4 days. When we did open it the rotten smell was gone. We wiped it down to get the cat litter smell out and then left the door open for a couple of days. Viola'! The freezer was good as new.
I noticed several people mentioning "charcoal" in this thread. Exactly, what *kind* of charcoal should be used for this purpose, and where does one get it?
Thanks for clarifying!
Are you supposed to leave the fridge on and running or off?
I had the same problem after Frances. The inside of our fridge is clean but the tile floor around it smells rotten. It seems to get worse when the fridge turns on and off. Any tips?
The charcoal will work---you can get the regular Kingsford or even the cheaper store brands. No self lighting though
I had the same problem after cleaning out my freezer. TERRIBLE FISH ODOR! We tried the newspaper, coffee grinds, vanilla, bleach and baking soda. Nothing worked. I was ready to bring this 2 year old freezer to the dump just to get the smell out of my basement when i decided to give it one last try. I sprayed about 1/2 bottle of lysol mold and mildew spay all over the racks and coils, especially the tubes running down the back side.
We had our freezer go blink also, we have removed everything even the freezer, the house still smell bad, how do I get rid of the smell in the basement and the lingering and coming upstairs??
please help!
I have tried bleach water, vinegar water, pure vinegar, three different ordor sprays, baking soda & water which worked the best. I thought next trip the dump when my son and one other person told me about charcoal. I just happened to have a new bag. I filled a baking dish and closed it up. At first i thought i wanted the smell to be gone after spending days and days trying everything people told or gave me. But honestly the charcoal worked!!
How do you get rid of bad smell from a freezer. I had a vacation for six weeks, when I came back my freezer had stopped working. There was some meat in there which was rotten and I can't get rid of the smell. It smells like dead carion.
I have used all the suggested things (e.g.) bicarbonate of soda, I have steamed it with boiling hot water, and left it outside with the door open. If anyone has a another solution, I would be happy to try it.My niece had the same problem. She scrubbed with bleach, aired it out, filled it with newspapers, put pans of baking soda, pans of cat litter. What FINALLY worked for her was to place a large container of fresh ground coffee beans on the bottom, close the door and let it sit for a week, closed up. You need to use fresh, dry, unused coffee grounds, not the wet grounds left after you brew coffee!
I made the mistake of plugging my freezer into a GFCI outlet. The outlet tripped and it was about a week before I noticed. Needless to say everything in the freezer had to go. The smell was over-powering. I took everything out of the freezer. There was blood and water at the bottom. I poured baking soda, lots of it and used a scented cat litter. I let it sit for a couple of days. Cleaned it up and it was smelling good too. This did the trick for me.
I had a similar situation with a chest freezer of mine. I moved out of an apartment that I was sharing with two other guys and I decided to be nice and let them borrow it (since it was full of frozen food that would never fit in their smaller freezer). A fuse went out one day and the freezer lost power. They didn't notice until WAY later. The smell was horrid. I tried using hot water and soap, Comet with Bleach, and a bunch of orange scented surface wipes. The smell seemed to be gone but it quickly returned the next day. So, I had just now tried the following:
- One bowl of water and charcoal
- One bowl of cat litter
- One open box of Arm and Hammer baking soda
- One glass full of unused coffee grounds
and last but not least...
- One peach scented car air freshener
I've also heard to use pure vanilla extract but I didn't have any. I will report my results tomorrow.
Eons ago I was a refrigerator/freezer service technician. If liquids like blood leaked into the insulation you have two options: pull the liner out of the freezer and replace the insulation, which takes two people who really know what they are doing, or replace the freezer. If you pay to replace the insulation the cost will equal or exceed the cost of a new freezer.
How do you know if the blood is in the insulation?
I am sharing a house with randoms at the moment, and I had been away for a week and got back to find a horrid smell as soon as I walked in the house. They said the smell was the bin then I opened the freezer to get food out and the smell knocked me over. They turned off the freezer at the wall and all my food was brown and soggy.
I cleaned out all the food and blood then used hot soapy water. Then drained that out and let it air out for a couple of days outside and it still stinks. So I poured in a bottle of white vinegar and it still smells. How can I get rid of the smell?
I've already disposed of the rotten meat from broken freezer, there is about 4" of bloody water standing in bottom of freezer. I'm going to dispose of the freezer, but how do I dispose of the bloody water first? The smell is unbearable!
By Deborah
NJ had that bad winter last year. We never got around to cleaning the freezer out after it failed somewhere around Christmas. After a while we just forgot about it. So now, July 1st, the freezer stinks and we won't forget that. Are the fumes going to be toxic to breath in?
By HELPme911
Our daughter's small chest type freezer was off for about 3 weeks and she did not know it. She did not have much meat in it but had a lot of frozen tomatoes. It was full of food and it smelled rotten. We took it out on the deck, scooped out the liquid mess and put it in 5 gallon buckets and poured it out in the woods. The smell about got us.
After getting it cleaned out, we scrubbed it with Clorox water and that did not get rid of the odor. Then we tried white vinegar and still it smelled bad. We also cleaned with lemon juice and soda. It still smelled bad so we let it sit outside in the hot sun with the top open for a couple of days. It still had the odor in it and I thought she would have to junk it but we took it back inside and plugged it up and let it run.
She put a bag of charcoal in it and gradually filled it with jugs of water so it would be full. After a few months, the odor was gone and the freezer was fine. No odor at all.
My freezer went out. I threw everything away, but didn't clean it. It needs to be wiped out. The smell is gone, however I had to put a bag of meat in the freezer.
Will it ruin it till I can get to it? It is really cold out, but won't be in a couple of days. Can I wait?
