Smell in kitchen, driving me MAD

[ChickyNuggies]

As the title says, there is a smell in the kitchen that I can't identify that I'm on the brink of tears of frustration about because of the house layout, the smell hits you as soon as you walk in the front door.

Smell is sort of like just gone off meat.

So far I have: cleaned the kitchen, inside all the cupboards, checked dates on things, cleaned the kitchen bin, thoroughly cleaned the fridge and thrown almost everything out, checked the freezer, moved the fridge out to check behind it, removed the kick boards and looked under there, ran the dishwasher on 3 clean cycles, ran the washing machine on 3 boil washes with washing machine cleaner, scrubbed the floor by hand and now I'm out of options.

Anybody have any other suggestions?

Next step would be under the floor as there is a large space under there however it appears you can't get down there without ripping the flooring up

Omg what is that. Do you need to suction something out with turkey baster maybe (and then Throw the baster?).
Please don’t make us all pull our fridges out op !!

I was going to say fridge drip tray! Mine just pulls out, it's quite tight though so watch you don't get covered in it 😬

The drain on the back of the fridge! It's minging but no smell 🤔

Have you taken the plinths off your kitchen units? Prime mouse territory!

Yes taken the plinths off!

Okay have emptied and cleaned the drip tray and poured hot water/bleach down the drain thingy. Been in the kitchen so long I think I've been used to the smell so will try and go back again later to see if that has fixed it! There did appear to be some kind of... Meatyness in the drip tray (not envy) so hopefully that is it...

The knowledge and power of Mumsnet!

I'm in the " it will be a decaying potato somewhere" camp.

I bought a bag of new potatoes recently and when I got them home and opened the bag I nearly threw up when the smell hit me .

The smell is as it evaporates....

@Brollypackedforscottishholiday

Dead mouse somewhere?

This was my thought

Have you checked the drain tube at the back of your fridge? It usually goes from a hole in the main body of the fridge to a drip pan at the bottom back. Ours got some spilled milk down it once and the smell was horrific.

Where do you store your shopping bags? Could you have missed a food item when you last unpacked?

Oh I should have rtft!

Sounds like a dead rat or mouse. Try and identify where the smell is strongest but might be behind skirting, underfloor boards /units. Could also be in the ceiling cavity... anywhere really.

Smell will go though.

@ChickyNuggies

This is very interesting. 39 years on this planet and didn't know this was a thing. How do I get it out?!

Where do I find this? 39 years; I'll raise you to 49. What is it? I've never cleaned one of those. 😳

Have you got potatoes lurking in a carrier/plastic bag, that was the source of my recent whiff of hades

I had a stinky kitchen as I had stashed a plastic carrier bag under the sink which had a very small package of pate in. I had missed this when unloading the shopping. It puffed up, exploded and was disgusting. Found it eventually after pouring litres of boiling water down the sink!

I came on to suggest the fridge drain, we had the same thing with ours. A carton of milk had leaked in the fridge, cleaned the fridge but weeks later there was the most awful smell. Emptied the drain and washed it and syringed diluted zoflora down the drain hole and that fixed it

Perhaps a dead mouse in the drip tray. Cover all bases.

Came here to say it's the drip tray in the back of your fridge. Glad that others have beaten me to it

I hope you've solved it with the fridge drain OP. If not, my parents larder and thus kitchen absolutely stank. We all thought it must be something dead behind the fitted cupboards. Weeks later we discovered it was a plastic storage jar, the type of thing that loose sweets might have been stored in in a sweet shop before being weighed out. Bizarrely it was letting off this stench, presumably decomposing in some invisible way.

Hope you've solved this OP but just incase you haven't, have you checked your light fitting? Sounds weird i know, but i had the same thing in a bathroom, after weeks of searching i found out that the old light fitting was degrading and giving off an odour when it got warm.

Ill raise you 75 years,I had no idea there was a drip tray 😳

Here it was the waste pipe for the washing machine. Not the bit with the filter (although that gets reeky too), and not the pipes belonging to the washing machine. But the bits of drainpipe which run from where you connect the machine down into the drain. Poking about in them with bendy rods was a revelation.

Rat? Does it smell like an old nappy?

We had one dead under the floor once and the smell was repugnant, it permeated everything.

Hope it's not but it was the first thing that came to mind.

Is that the cause of the smell then?
Or could you be pregnant? Pregnancy always gave me the nose of a bloodhound!

If it's not the drop tray then check the hinge area of the dishwasher, both inside and outside. Ours gets minging and doing a cleaning cycle doesn't sort it, you have to get a cloth and scoop out congealed soap and fat along that line every 6 months or so.

Likewise the bit the oven door drips into. Old fat can smell horrendously bad.