Unpleasant odors from the refrigerator are a fairly common phenomenon that occurs for a number of reasons. Why does the back of the refrigerator stink and what to do about it, I asked the refrigeration specialist.
The durability of household appliances is determined not only by the great name of the manufacturer, but also by correct operation
Reasons for appearance
It sounds trivial, but the main reason for the stink in the refrigerator is spoiled food!
Of course, in the conditions created by a household refrigerator, microorganisms cannot multiply quickly, and their vital activity is not as active as in warm conditions, but putrefactive processes are still possible, especially if the food is unsealed.
The most “smelly” products are:
- Fish.
- Meat of all kinds.
- Some fruits and vegetables.
- Milk.
In general, anything can give off an unpleasant odor, even dried fruits, but some of them are more fragrant, while others have practically no smell even at a serious stage of decay.
In more rare cases, an unpleasant odor is associated with broken household appliances, and spoiled food is not involved. We are talking about the leakage of chemicals that are used for quick freezing. This smell is reminiscent of rotten meat, but clearly reeks of chemicals, and comes out somewhat worse than food “aromas”.
In some cases, the refrigerator begins to smell soon after improper defrosting. Moreover, the smell in this situation can be of either chemical or organic origin.
Summing up
Modern innovative ionization and purification systems, lemon on plates and Darnitsky slices do not cancel the basic rules for operating a refrigerator. So as not to wonder what to do - if the refrigerator stinks, systematically check the products, remove spoiled ones and carry out preventive cleaning of the equipment.
I hope I was helpful to you. All I can do is offer you the video in this article and wish you good luck in the difficult battle for purity. How do you deal with unpleasant odors in the kitchen, or maybe you have a unique secret for quickly cleaning a microwave oven? Share your tips in the comments.
Did you like the article? Subscribe to our Yandex.Zen channel
Great article 0
How to eliminate the problem that appears due to spoiled products?
There are many professional and household ways to solve this problem, but first of all, the refrigerator needs to be washed.
The refrigerator should be washed with special care. In general, cleaning the refrigerator compartment should be regular, but preventive cleaning is not so thorough and time-consuming.
Please note that you need to wash not only the walls, but all accessories;
- Shelves.
- Pallets.
- Lattices.
- Vegetable boxes and stands.
All this is taken out of the chamber and sent to soak in basins. A strong soap solution is usually used as a soaking agent. You need to keep the parts in it for at least 2-3 hours, without adding any chemicals or special cleaning agents - their turn will come a little later.
Expert opinion
Borodina Galina Valerievna
Before the procedure, the refrigerator must be defrosted and all water removed from it.
While the accessories are in the basin, the refrigerator compartment, including the freezer, is thoroughly rinsed by hand.
To wash the refrigerator, you don’t need a hard sponge; a thick cloth as a rag is enough. Both a soap solution and a store-bought kitchen furniture cleaner are suitable as a detergent. At the same time, you should carefully inspect the general and freezer compartments for food remains.
In most cases, an unpleasant odor does not arise from spoiled food that is in plain sight, but from rotting small pieces that get lost in technical crevices, such as shelf holders. For example, a small piece of sausage gets lost in the depths of the refrigerator, and after a week or two it begins to smell. If you can’t find it, then no amount of washing will help – the source of the stench will remain in place.
Meanwhile, the shelves and drawers have already gotten wet in the basin; it’s time to wash and wipe them. The main task is to remove greasy stains in the corners and crevices of refrigerator accessories. They, of course, are not the main cause of the stench, but they make their contribution. In addition, such stains may affect the quality of the products. A regular dishwashing detergent with fat-dissolving ingredients is suitable for this. There should be no problems, since all such contaminants softened during soaking.
After completing the procedure, both the refrigerator and the drawer shelves should be wiped dry with a thick cloth and left in the open air for a couple of hours. In other words, the refrigerator doors should be left open, and all accessories should be taken out of the room, for example, onto the balcony. After drying and airing, you can return everything to its place - there should be no smell, the food will remain safe.
If the equipment is not ventilated after treatment, the smell may persist for some time. In general, nothing terrible, but this will affect the quality of the products almost 100%.
Store products
You can get rid of the smell of the refrigerator using both folk remedies and store-bought ones. Today, various highly effective inventions are available on the market that remove any stench and restore fresh air inside the chamber.
Feedback
Feedback helps eliminate the rotten smell in the refrigerator. It can be purchased at specialized household appliance stores for a small amount. The drug effectively absorbs stench, restores normal aroma in the chamber and prevents the spread of bacteria.
Oro fix 02012
To remove rottenness and staleness from a refrigeration unit, you can use the cleaning agent Oro fix 02012. The substance disinfects surfaces, eliminating the stench.
Top House
Among modern housewives, Top House is very popular. With its help, you can not only remove the stench from household appliances, but also clean its surfaces from complex contaminants.
The substance contains silicone, which restores the shine of internal structures. The company's assortment also includes wipes and fresheners for cleaning the refrigerator.
Fighting in case of breakdown
It is unlikely that you will be able to fix the problem without the help of a specialist!
An inexperienced nose will not always be able to detect a technical smell - this “aroma” is very similar to spoiled meat, but after washing the refrigerator compartment it does not disappear anywhere, and sometimes, on the contrary, intensifies. You cannot solve this problem yourself - the spilled substance is harmful to health.
Expert opinion
Borodina Galina Valerievna
Before contacting a company that repairs household appliances, you need to carefully study the reviews about it - now there are a lot of scammers who charge a lot of money for basic work, and the average person does not even understand that he was deceived.
Before the technician arrives, the refrigerator must be defrosted and, if possible, washed. Why possible? The smell is very strong and a person with allergies or asthma may feel unwell. But defrosting and draining the water are mandatory; without this, the master will not be able to do his job. We will omit the technical details of the procedure and move straight to further actions. After the work is completed, the smell will persist for some time. To speed up its removal, you need to use special odor absorbers that are sold in stores.
Silicone balls, which are placed in shoes to combat odors, have proven themselves to be quite good.
New refrigerator
Why does the new refrigerator smell? If the smell does not go away after washing with baking soda and airing, it is most likely better to get rid of the unit as quickly as possible by returning it to the seller. If the smell of plastic is so toxic that you can't stand it, don't expect the situation to improve. This happens if low quality consumables were used during production. Such a technical defect cannot be eliminated. Is it worth the wait?
Read more about the reasons for the smell in a new refrigerator here.
“They brought a new refrigerator. It took a long time to choose so that it wouldn’t smell like plastic. And so! Our brand new unit was delivered. They opened it. And oh HORROR! The whole house began to smell like plastic (((. I’ve been roaring for three days now(((. My husband is screaming at me. He says that I threw a lot of money in the trash. I washed the refrigerator with warm water, and the smell became even worse. I took the risk of putting food in, and so did they "They stank. It's simply impossible to eat them! I threw away the milk in a closed package and the sealed cheese. And what I dared to try left a terrible chemical aftertaste. Not a refrigerator, but a white coffin! What should I do?"
Advice from "Chistyuli" . Return it to the store! Why suffer? The constant smell of plastic in the house is not a problem. Well, if there is no way to make a return, fight the smell with the help of absorbers. You can buy ready-made products in the store. Or you can cope quite inexpensively and effectively with the help of folk recipes (read below).
Prevention of occurrence
Since the main cause of an unpleasant odor lies in spoiled food, the main preventative measure is to immediately throw away all the rotten meat and wipe up all spilled liquids, otherwise repeated washing and soaking cannot be avoided. In addition, especially odorous products need to be stored correctly. Chief among them are canned fish. If you leave an open jar in the chamber, the smell will not take long to appear, and this despite the fact that in reality the product will be fresh and quite edible.
Such food should be stored either in special containers (in all honesty, an ordinary glass jar with a lid will do) or in small plastic bags. But if a fragrant delicacy does spoil, you need to throw it away even from a closed container - the smell is very pungent and will dissipate instantly. At the same time, you need to make sure that nothing is lying around anywhere in the refrigerator, even in the smallest and narrowest cracks. This is the most dangerous option, since you can take a spoiled product and throw it away, but you will have to look for a stale piece of sausage.
To further reduce the likelihood of odor in the refrigerator, you need to use special absorbers and fresheners.
Balls for absorbing odors from shoes have already been discussed above; in addition to this, the following would be suitable:
- Small container with ground coffee.
- Raw crumbled potatoes.
- Activated carbon, preheated in a frying pan.
- Wrinkled printer or packaging paper.
All these products need to be updated periodically, but if one of the above is constantly in the refrigerator, the smell from spoiled food will not appear so quickly, you can have time to remove the source of the “aroma”.
Air purifiers designed for both refrigeration chambers and indoor environments have proven themselves well. The principle of their operation is very simple - air is drawn into the device by a small pump, cleaned there, and released back. Not only are all odors absorbed, but bacteria are also destroyed. The main thing is not to forget to change the filter. However, no filter or purifier can cope with the strong smell of rotten meat or fish.
Expert opinion
Borodina Galina Valerievna
If you purchase an air purifier for the refrigerator with an ultraviolet radiation function, you can not only protect your products from unpleasant “odors,” but also prolong their freshness - the bacteria in the refrigerator compartment will die almost completely.
How to determine what action needs to be taken?
Of course, the absence of any odors from the refrigerator is an ideal picture. More or less pleasantly, weakly or strongly, this storage of products will still smell of something.
We suggest you conduct such a test to determine if refrigerator odors are unbearable if you don’t trust your sense of smell or want to hint to someone close to you that it’s time to wash the device. Take two pieces of butter. One is displayed in an open saucer on the refrigerator shelf. The other is placed in a tightly closed container and sent there.
The test with a piece of butter works
After 1-2 days we take out the oil and try it. If both pieces taste equally good, everything is fine. But if, when trying the one that was lying without “shelter”, you felt an unpleasant aftertaste, then drastic measures cannot be avoided.
Advice! The same experiment can be carried out with distilled water.
Precautions
- Do not put hot or still warm food in the refrigerator.
- You should not cover the shelves with anything.
- Do not allow the freezer to become covered with a thick layer of frost. Ice or a layer of snow more than 5-6 mm thick impairs the operation of the refrigerator and leads to excessive energy consumption.
- You should also not scrape off ice or dirt with hard, sharp objects.
- There is no need to place the refrigerator near heating appliances or stoves. The minimum distance is 50 cm.
- The refrigerator is not exposed to direct sunlight.
Review of successful/unsuccessful refrigerators
The Hotpoint-Ariston, Indesit, Gorenje, and NORD refrigerators received many negative reviews.
The Belarusian Atlant is recognized as one of the best among budget refrigerators. Among the expensive ones, good ones are the German Bosch, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Daewoo, etc.
...I would like to note, however, that this is rather a subjective opinion of some forum members. For many buyers, units of these brands do not work quite as expected. And then the appearance of a smell is inevitable. Or a pleasant surprise awaits the owner - an excellent, hardworking and impeccable refrigerator, because a lot depends on care and operating conditions.
“We went on a business trip. There was a small piece of meat left in the freezer. The lights were turned off. The meat melted and flowed. It started to smell, and there were even worms (I don’t know how!). The refrigerator was washed, but blood leaked into the drain hole. What to do?"
Advice from "Chistyuli" . Just for such cases, “Chistyuli” has an article written based on the recommendations of the masters. https://chistyulya.info/uborka/zapah/ustranit-zapah-holodilnika#i. Diagnosis and “treatment” of causes - read the most useful information! Recommendations: if you do not have an independent power supply, never leave meat, dairy and other perishable products in the refrigerator.
Freezer care
We store products not only in the refrigerator; long-term storage is carried out in a special chamber with lower temperatures - in the freezer. Unfortunately, power outages can cause the contents to defrost, spoil, and hence an uninvited guest - a rotten smell. The problem must be solved immediately, without waiting for the unbearable aroma. Please note that the chamber must be completely defrosted before processing. Hard-to-reach places should be cleaned especially carefully, as remnants of defrosted meat juice or berries could have accumulated there.
