Have you ever opened up your fridge and wondered where that awful smell is coming from?
The culprit is usually gone-off food, and we've all fallen foul of forgetting to use all the veg we bought before it starts going mouldy and makes our fridge smell like a rubbish tip.
Although smelly fridges can be a problem at any time of year, it's a common sight - or stench - after Christmas, as many of us will have overestimated the number of Brussells we needed, and have probably left the spare ones sitting at the bottom of our salad trays.
But if you're cleaning out your leftover Christmas food this week, then worry not - as one cleaning expert has claimed it's actually pretty easy to get rid of the nasty smells that might have accumulated in your fridge.
Emily Barron at Rezigo told The Mirror the first thing you should do is give your fridge a good clean, but if you still need help soaking up the stench after that, then a common kitchen item could do the trick - bicarbonate of soda.
She said: "Thorough cleaning is obviously the first step to deodorising a smelly fridge. But if that doesn’t work immediately, you can place a bowl of bicarbonate of soda in the fridge. This will absorb the smells in short order. Fridge air fresheners are also available."
Bicarb is available from most supermarkets and is relatively cheap - costing just 65p for a 200g tub from Tesco.
Emily also stated that understanding the cause of smelly odours in your fridge is just as important as getting rid of them, as it's not just gone-off food that can stink.
Some foods such as camembert cheese or curry are just naturally smelly, so Emily recommends eating those as soon as possible to get them out of your fridge, as this will help the smell fade.
And even when the cause of the stench is rotting food, there are certain items that can cause more problems than others, as Emily explained: "All food emits an unpleasant smell when it degrades. But some are worse than others. If you have rotten vegetables – particularly brassicas, such as broccoli, cabbage, and sprouts – your fridge will not smell good.
"Old potatoes, rotten meat, old eggs, and spilt milk will also cause a foul smell."
If clearing out all of your old food doesn't work, then the cause of the unpleasant odour could be your fridge's drip tray, which will need cleaning out before any smells disappear.
Emily added: "The drip tray in your fridge is there to catch melted ice from the back of the fridge and stop it from leaking out of the unit. Over time, detritus such as broken-off food scraps can gather. Rotting in the wastewater and creating unpleasant odours."
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