Fridge Left With Food To Rot
Here is one for you rehabbers. I have a rental property where the tennant vanished and had the electricity cut. By the time I noticed, it had been about 5 days and they left food in the fridge/freezer which had rotted. There are now roaches and maggots infesting the fridge area. I have set up roach traps and am going to clean the fridge out.
My questions are:
What is the best chemicals to use to clean the inside of the fridge?
How do I get it to smell good again?
Any other advice to saving this fridge and making it look good again?
Thanks.
The inside of fridges are extremely resiliant. I have seen a couple of really nasty ones that I would have probably thrown away clean up nicely.
First thing get some vicks vaporub and put it under your nose. Then get all the food out. Take all the shelves out and put them in the driveway. Get a garden pump-style sprayer and fill it with half bleach half water and spray them down. let the bleach sit a few minutes then power wash the suckers down. Spray the inside of the fridge with bleach, let it sit a few and then wipe it out and repeat. It sucks but it works. It will help if the fridge is outside for ventilation.
Good Luck!
If you do use bleach, be sure to wear gloves and a respirator. The last bleach job I did ate holes in my hands and it was hard to breathe for the next week. I used to never use bleach because it is too toxic and environmentally unfriendly. Live and learn...
Hydrogen peroxide works about as well to "bleach" things and kill bacteria, and is harmless to humans. Refrigerators are designed to be easy to clean, so any household cleaner will generally work
Chris
.
In a few instances, we dragged the fridge outside, emptied and pressure-washed it.
[addsig]
Yeah, bleach is nasty, but it is a miracle worker.
I have heard that once the food has rotten and sat inside the fridge with the power off, you will never get the smell out. The smell saturates the insulation inside of the fridge and there is no way to clean the smell out of the insulation. The only way to fix at that point is to replace the fridge. But what others have said here indicates another truth.
Go to home depot and get odoban. Put that in a dish and put in the fridge after you take out all the food. Take the fridge outside and wash it out with baking soda and water. Leave it open to dry and then repeat.
Also, if it had maggota make sure you take off th air panels in the freezer section. Chances are there are fly eggs under there.