Fridge Stinks - Help!!

[Hueandcry]

About to move into a rented property & the fridge absolutely stinks. It's so bad I can't imagine putting any food in there!! I've left it tonight with a dish of bicarbonate of soda in the bottom in the hope it will be better tomorrow. Any other suggestions I can try? Also if no improvement is this something I can complain about to the landlord?

I was going to suggest the bicarb trick, but I see you've done that.

If there's a drainage hole at the back, try giving that a clean. You probably don't have a pipe cleaner to hand (!) but that would be ideal to clean it.

Finally, I'd leave the fridge door open overnight so the nasty niffs can escape.

Still struggling with this. I can't bring myself to put any food in there because of the smell. Is this something I can ask the landlord to replace?

Have you tried leaving cut onions in there? And also cut citrus fruit?

Also buy one of those commercial smell absorbers and try cleaning with something extremely abrasive

If it’s unusable then yes I don’t see why you can’t Al for it to be replaced

in the meantime you could try putting some baby sterilising fluid in the drainage hole, this has worked for me in the past

Turn it off.
Fill a bowl with hot water, fairy liquid and some bleach.
Scrub it clean, remove all shelves etc and scrub those as well.
Leave the door open overnight.
In the morning give it another wipe over and it should be back to new.

Take out all the shelves and clean the whole fridge

Cut up onions …leave them in their overnight

My old fridge developed an absolutely horrific smell. It turned out to be a small grape that had lodged itself in the drainage hole. I had to buy some pipe cleaners and spend some time cleaning it out and then out some bleach spray in which got rid of the smell. Might be worth investigating.

If the fridge stinks then it needs cleaning

Check the seals on the door, if milk has been spilt it can run into the seal and go mouldy. The smell is rank!

I'm an accidental landlord OP. If a new tenant had a problem like this, I'd expect them to tell me asap so that I could try to get the cost of getting the fridge professionally cleaned or replaced if necessary from a previous tenant. If the landlord has provided the fridge, it should be cleaned to a high standard or not smell.

I had one tenant who emailed me one day to say she'd left the flat a couple of months previously and wasn't coming back. When I went to the flat, she'd left loads of her stuff, including a full fridge. It was revolting. The fridge had to be replaced as the smell just wouldn't come out.

I've cleaned it thoroughly & all the shelves. Left a dish of bicarb in & got a fridge fresh gel thing. Wiped it down with bleach & cleaned out the drain. It still stinks. Got a few other issues so I'm going to contact the ll tomorrow. It's rank

There’s usually a tray on the outside at the back where moisture collects which I only discovered when I couldn’t get rid of the smell.
it was filled with what I can only describe as 10 year old cottage cheese type. Substance

Check the drip tray, you have to pull the fridge out and it's on the back, usually near the bottom.

This might sound odd but tea bags, keep your used tea bags when you've made a cuppa and put them in a cup or saucer in the fridge (not if they've been in a cup with milk though). Also white vinegar, wipe and leave...brilliant for stinky washing machines as well.

A bowl of charcoal in the fridge works well too after cleaning to keep odours away

Zoflora is the only stench murdering product I can recommend. It's horrible stuff but it will do it. Otherwise you need yo find the source of the smell