OMG the stench

[averylongtimeago]

I went to get something from our caravan the other day and there was a funny smell.
After a bit of bloodhound like detection work, I opened the fridge, then the ice box.
There were blue bottles and maggots, and something that may once have been a chicken portion.

And the smell not envy

So any advice for getting rid of really nasty niffs- and any tales of similar woes to make me feel better?

I had some milk leak in the fridge in the house without noticing. It had filled the drip tray at the back of the fridge on the outside by the radiator so was being heated. It was rancid and semi solid. I couldn't work out where the smell was coming from as the inside of the fridge looked clean. Ohhhh the retching whilst I cleaned it out 🤢🤮🤢

Oh, remember to take a toothbrush to the seal when cleaning

Why? Does the seal have bad breath too?

Forgot to empty the kitchen bin once before a long weekend away one summer... there had been cat food scraped into it.. the smell was eye watering and when I opened the bin, around 100 flies made their escape leaving a writhing mess of their maggot offspring behind 🤢🤢🤢

Pure zoflora? Throw it around like candy

I have tried bicarbonate and lemon.
Tempted to wipe it out with zoflora but that would just overlay with a flowery smell.

At least ythere wasn't any other food in there. When DS's fishing maggots escaped in his wardrobe it was like the Amytiville horror upstairs.

@Ineedaweeinpeace why on earth would you throw candy? That's going straight in my belly!

My freezer packed up while I was away for a fortnight a few years ago. It was the height of of summer so I arrived home to the stink of putrefying chicken and prawns and rank water all over my kitchen floor. It was long ago enough that I’ve blanked out exactly how it got dealt with, but I seem to remember a lot of bleach was involved.

Could smell something nasty in the garden. Saw that a large plastic tub was full of rainwater, assumed it was stagnant so tipped it over.

On a tide of stinky water a very bloated dead squirrel with horrid yellow teeth bared in its ugly little face washed up against some trellis, reeking of death. I gagged until my eyes ran.

I then did the whimpering 'WTF do I do now??' dance, heaving all the while.

Eventually I scooped up the festering monstrosity with two plastic kiddie spades out of the sandpit, absolutely dreading it going 'pop' like a foul dead-squirrel balloon, triple-quadruple bagged it and put it in the bin.

Jeyes-Fluid-ed the spades, went indoors for tea and a bit of a cry.

Wash fridge out with lemon juice for its antibacterial properties and then sprinkle bicarb.

For weeks, DCats food cupboard had an increasingly vile smell of rotten meat. I could see nothing in there - just sealed boxes of cat food, intact bags of Dreamies etc.
Finally, I picked up the cardboard box of Felix at the back of the cupboard. A small, suspicious drip oozed from the base. Foolishly, I tore open the cardboard top...
The stench blew me across the kitchen! One of the plastic sachets of meat had been improperly sealed or sterilised during manufacture, and it had exploded inside the box. As it slowly liquefied, it had been seeping into the cardboard base, releasing a smell into the cupboard.
I had to take the whole box to the outside wheelie bin - it would have been unbearable in the kitchen bin!
And don’t ask about the packet of pork chops 30 years ago, that fell out of the supermarket bag down the back of my car boot, and stayed there rotting gently for three weeks while I was using DH’s car...!

To celebrate a new job i bought myself an expensive leather laptop bag. First Monday after first weekend of new job I picked up the bag ready for work, and the most awful stench wafted up. Turns out I had left a bottle of fresh orange juice in there, and where it had been left propped up next to a radiator over the weekend, the juice had heated up, fermented, bottle exploded and rancid orange juice leaked all over the bag, my new work laptop, travel and work pass, lovely scarf and gloves and my external hard drive containing years worth of files.

Whole lot had to be binned and I had to explain to new job manager why I needed a new laptop etc after 1 week. They were not impressed.

Dd left a prawn sandwich wrapper in the seat pocket of my car For weeks every time I got in I could smell fish. Thought I had a problem down there!

Oh god. I know the smell. I'd been down on the quayside for something or other and every time I got back in the car there was the rancid fish smell. Convinced myself I had a problem and was just about to make a doc apt when I realised I'd obviously stepped in fish guts or something

Also god help me. People keep mentioning maggots. Makes me want to heave right here. 🤢

Throw a couple of new shoe odour eaters inside.

Milton on the plastic, left on for 20 mins, and a very good airing for the caravan.

A few years ago I started to notice a nasty smell in my car. It wasn't too bad at first but as the weather got warmer it got worse and worse until the only way I could drive it was with all the windows down. I looked everywhere (or so I thought) but couldn't find anything.

Eventually, right under the passenger seat I found a packet of rotten fish that DH had bought from Tesco and must have slipped underneath. It got a lot better once we'd removed it, but it never went completely and eventually we scrapped the car

I work on an acute ward for people with urological and bowel issues and we often have people with stomas etc, it is often very, very smelly. We had a gentleman once with some sort of fungating cancer and I can tell you that was the worst thing I have ever smelled, the poor chap. I have a very strong stomach but you could smell it from outside the ward and everyone was gagging ⬅️ puke

One of the dc left a slush puppy in one of those pockets you can hang on the back of car seats.
After weeks of blaming dh farting in the car, it was discovered, my god you'd think something so synthetic wouldn't smell that bad, you would be wrong!

But the shrew in the welly wins.

I found a rotten banana in ds's backpack once...

Vinegar and freezing stuff works well,.

Milton! Will try it!

DS once cleaned our loo with the hoover. Hovered poo does not smell good!

For really bad smells cut an onion in half and leave on the side, it will absorb the smell and you'll see it go black as it does. MIL told me this years ago and it definitely works.

jenthelibrarian - hooting here! Just relayed your tale of woe to my husband, who remembered poking a dead pig in a canal with a boat hook... Apparently the noise, stench and fall-out was quite spectacular. And his brothers wouldn't speak to him for days.

Poo in the hoover - bleugh!

It was bad enough here when we vacuumed the spot someone was sick on. We just binned the hoover in the end.

Im a carer and i looked after a lady with stoma and catheter bags. One day the smell in her flat was high to say the least, still thats to expect from a lady with her disability. But it got worse. Twice a week i went to hers and the smell was enough to drive a Methodist to drink. The office couldn't give a toss and noone else looked for the culprit. So it was up to me. So on one 3 hour enabling call I hunted, before i passed out. Their it was. A full stoma. Under the tv unit next to the radiator. I almost died getting rid. Bless her she had taken it off one evening and forgot about it. I never felt such relief. Knowing the next time i visited it wouldnt smell like rotten shite was thanks enough.