Musty Kitchen Cupboards

[GuardyLou]

Here's a scintillating thread to entertain you on a Sunday morning.

My kitchen cupboards are musty. They were thoroughly cleaned last winter and everything in them was cleaned (mostly in the dishwasher) before going back into the cupboards. I have a disability which makes reaching into the cupboards to clean them very difficult so it's not done regularly but this smell has only become apparent in the last year or so.

Yesterday afternoon I emptied one and cleaned it with Fairy Power Spray, rinsed and wiped dry then left it open all afternoon. I closed it before going to bed. When I opened it this morning it's still musty, not so bad but still there. It's on an outside wall but the ones on the inside wall are just as bad.

The kitchen is 12 years old and still in perfectly good condition, apart from the musty smell. I can't afford to replace it. The cupboards aren't overfilled, don't get mucky inside and I'm very careful to put only clean things in them.

Where am I going wrong in my kitchen ownership 'journey', dear MNers?

Get some minty, tea tree, or eucalyptus essential oils. Mix a few drops with water in a spray and use that in there. If it's clean, sort of just spray and wipe with a microfiber cloth.

Following, as I've had weird smelly cupboards too.

One turned out to contain a packet of food which had been quietly going manky, so that was easily solved.

But another I never did figure out.

It was a cupboard containing cutlery and crockery, so no obvious suspects.

I cleaned all of the contents and the empty cupboard itself. The smell lessened slightly but lingered – I'm not sure for how long. However I can now report that it has disappeared completely.

Make sure everything is really thoroughly dried after getting out of the dishwasher. This was the problem in our cupboards, now I dry everything with a tea towel and the problem has gone.

My cupboards on outside walls get a damp kind of smell which cleaning helps with briefly but it comes back. Maybe try some of those moisture solutions like the little silica filled pots.

@Lexibletheflexible I'll try that, thank you.

@PerkingFaintly That's odd that the smell has gone of its own accord. There is no food in these cupboards so I know it's not that.

@boundarysponge My school friend lived in a very up to date household with a dishwasher (which was newfangled to me in those days). We'd take bowls out the cupboard to do baking on a Sunday afternoon and they'd have a puddle of water in them 😬- that has given me a lifetime's good habit of making sure anything that goes in the cupboard is properly dry!

@RaininSummer that's an idea, thank you.

I suspect the smell had got into the actual fabric of the cupboard, and took a while to dissipate.

I've been presuming the cleaning removed the original source of the smell, though I never worked out what it was.

That would make sense @PerkingFaintly .