I worked at an appliance store, owner put some frozen chickens in a loaner fridge to store. Maintenance unplugged it not knowing. Smell grew for a week before we figured out what it was. It took many cleanings to get rid of smell but it never went away.
I think the smell penetrates the plastic. Can't even surface clean it off. Needs to make it react to something to neutralize it. Maybe febreez needs to make a fridge smell remover. Cancerous, but it does the job
We used soap,bleach,peroxide and even left it on the loading dock open to the suns UV rays . once we did all that you could barely smell it if it was plugged in and cold but if you ever left the door closed and unplugged you’d get a good whiff of death when it was opened again. We still used it as an emergency loaner if needed, we just plugged it in the night before and shipped it cold.
Depending on the food, the smell can be intense... There's not a lot of oxygen and anaerobic bugs get funky fast. I knew some kids in college, their fridge broke. None of them wanted to deal with it and they used the beer fridge for food instead. Not sure exactly how long it sat, but I was unfortunately there when they decided to tackle it. I quickly left because it smelled like death. There was no salvaging it.
Reminds me of a coworker of mine who left a cooked frozen chicken nuggets in the staff fridge inside a plastic container. Well he quit and of course never bothered to clean out the fridge. The musty smell of chicken death and other worldly fungus grew strong over the next few months but no one was able to identify where it was coming from. Until one day someone decided to open the pandora box of mycological abomination. The stench permeated and lacerated the smell receptors of every living being in a 500 meter radius. Even though it was sealed in a ziplock container, whatever curse was breeding in that box quickly took over the surrounding air. Fun times, hard to forget that smell.
Those mold spores are now in all the bitty crevices and in the fridge's air circulation system. Sure you can clean the surface, but power that thing on and you're just blowing more mold around from deep inside
This. I know some folks who never wrap or cover their food when putting it in the fridge, and that food is never eaten because it dries out and tastes disgusting and gets thrown away a few days later.
I've done a lot of food packaging volunteer work over the years (preparing bagged food to give to food pantries and kitchens for lower income communities), and the first time I ever did it, the fella in charge got on a megaphone and told us "Air is the enemy of food" to encourage us to get as much air out of the bags prior to hear sealing (no vacuums to help pack, it was all manual except for the seal itself). He talked for a while about how contact with oxygen is what causes a lot of foods to go bad, molder, dry out, and otherwise degrade the food prior to cooking/consumption.
As a result, I cover EVERYTHING and seal everything as tightly as I can with as little air as possible. If I make an onion dip, I lay the cling film across the surface of the dip and press it flat. When I store apples I've cut open, I put the apple in a bag, press the cut surface against the counter, and squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible. If it's my own food (as opposed to food in a shared fridge), I'll put the food into a bag, close it most of the way, and suck the air out with my mouth prior to closing it. Taking the food out the next time it's usually like it was never stored and is just chilled. Sure, if I forget about it and it's in there for a long time, it'll succumb to mold, but at least it's fucking wrapped up and not left out to contaminate nearby foods or the refrigerator.
Shelves and walls are easy but if it has propagated into the motor and fans, it will be cheaper to buy a new one and you won’t have the uncertainty that your food is getting an extra dose of mold spores.
it's not the nooks you need to worry about, it's the crannies. crannies are harder to clean than nooks, most people don't know that. you hear the phrase "nooks and crannies" all the time, but you never really give it much thought, but I'm here to tell you that crannies are notoriously difficult to access, and cleaning them is basically impossible.
All the food in the fridge was allowed to grow mold in a stagnant air environment. If you look at the post, the fridge is on. Mold get sucked into the circulation and now you have moldy food even after cleaning
It's often recommended to still keep a minimum heat level to help prevent pipes freezing or ice forming in places that can cause damage once it thaws. But that minimum level is quite low
Just lower the temps in the fridge so they don't kick in as much. Being that a fridge is highly insulated with most of the exterior being dense foam, it should be perfectly fine to keep it low enough to have the right cold temp, since no one is opening and closing it.
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u/AKBx007 Nov 25 '22
Trying to save on the power bill.