Lingering stink in freezer

[cmac2012]

One of my clients has an incredibly designer goofy refrigerator in her kitchen. It has two lower freezer drawers that have the same white Formica drawer face as in the rest of the kitchen. It’s not working well, defrosting would help, but will likely take longer than the average freezer, long story.

She has a nice GE refrigerator in the garage, one of those with a narrow door on the left for the freezer, and a wider door on the right for refrigerator. She unplugged it a few months back, I forget why, but she forgot to check the freezer thoroughly, she thought it was empty. There was some meat in there, and by the time she discovered the issue the stink was huge.

She wrapped the offending stuff in copious plastic bags, got rid of it, and scrubbed the holy hell out of the freezer. But the stink lingers. I saw the whole thing for the first time last night, and the stink is pretty bad. It’s hard for me to imagine that kind of order sticking to plastic or steel after a good scrubbing.

The web says to put activated charcoal inside to absorb lingering odors. She hasn’t pulled it away from the wall. I’m thinking to remove all back panels to see if some of the stuff somehow dripped into a hidden space.

Would be really handy to use this to store the stuff from the main refrigerator during the defrost. But she claims the odor will permeate food. Seems almost hard to believe.

Getting rid of the stink would be good either way. Anybody know how to do it? I’m going to try the activated charcoal for starters.

[Tony H]

Is it plastic or porcelain inside? If it's plastic the smell might be there for good. A friend had his power go out while he was on vacation (He was an amateur radio operator and his house got hit by lightning). He said he smelled the fridge as soon as he got out of the car.
Insurance bought him a new fridge because of the smell. It still worked and he kept it as a garage fridge but the smell never went away.

[oldsinner111]

we always used vinegar for cleaning. follow by unplugging unit and prop open dors couple of days

[BWhitmore]

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[cmac2012]

Originally Posted by Tony H

Is it plastic or porcelain inside? If it's plastic the smell might be there for good. A friend had his power go out while he was on vacation (He was an amateur radio operator and his house got hit by lightning). He said he smelled the fridge as soon as he got out of the car.
Insurance bought him a new fridge because of the smell. It still worked and he kept it as a garage fridge but the smell never went away.

Yikes. Pretty sure it’s plastic, I’ll be back there in a day or so.

I guess at this point it’s stick with plan A. I’ll pull it out, check out the back and see if there’s any possibility something drained into a defroster tray underneath. After that more vinegar scrubbing and a bunch of activated charcoal.

[cmac2012]

Originally Posted by oldsinner111

we always used vinegar for cleaning. follow by unplugging unit and prop open dors couple of days

I’m going to be a scrubbing mo-fo for a short time.