BLECH!!!

[Daisygirl]

Ewww! I had to have a furnace repair a couple of weeks ago. When the guy plugged in his trouble light, we had to unplug the deep freeze. Guess what! Never plugged it back in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I went down to take out a roast and the smell nearly knocked me over. Talk about GROSS! Luckily I had been depleting my stockpile recently so the dollar value is not too high. The stink value though! Whew. We took all the food out to the outside garbage and sealed it up with duct tape til garbage day so no animals get in it. I dumped bleach into the freezer to try to kill the stink. It was so bad I couldn't deal with soaking up the liquid from the melted stuff. Hopefully the bleach will make it not so bad ina day or so when I clean that up.

Has anyone ever dealt with this before? How did you soak up the nasty remaining liquid?

[favesis37]

oh no! sorry i have never had this happen, and very sorry you lost any food at all.

[dcompton]

I've never had to deal with it before, and I don't know how much yuck you have to get out. Two things come to mind, but others may have better ideas:

1. Sacrifice a roll or two of paper towels and use tongs to pick them up to toss. Wear gloves if you have them.

2. Old towels or rags, washed in hot water and bleach when you finish. But wringing them out before washing? I think I'd forget frugal and use paper towels!

3. No ideas for the smell which may linger. Vinegar? Baking soda? Don't know. But I'll follow the thread and make notes for future disasters!

[nuisance26]

~Oh thats disgusting! You poor thing. I've cleaned up some horrible stinky messes back in my restaurant job days. We always used Clorox cleanser there and it seemed to get rid of odors. A fridge is a bit different. I know baking soda, newspaper and vinegar all help to remove odor. I hope you find something that works.~

[Missy]

yuck!! good luck. I will follow this tread too...

maybe rubbing the inside with a cut lemon? then washing as usual?

[AirForceWife]

Wow, Karen, I would say that really stinks, but then people might think I'm some kind of smart-a$$ or something!!


Seriously, your best bet to get the nasty stuff out is either a damp rag mop that you let soak it up and then ring out (with the long handle of the mop, you won't have to bend over the freezer and face all of those smells!) or just lots of paper towel or old towels. If you use the towels, I'd still recommend a stick or broom handle to keep yourself more upright!!

For the smells, I have used baking soda, unused coffee grounds, and charcoal. In fact, during moves we put charcoal in pillow cases and leave it in the freezer and fridge so they don't get all smelly on the trucks. To be honest, I think the coffee grounds take a while, but work okay, the charcoal works a little faster but then you have to clean the charcoal dust back out. If you put a layer of newspaper on the bottom of the freezer, it should help. I just always get a big bag of the cheapest charcoal I can find. Baking soda is good, I've just always found the charcoal faster.

Hope this helps, sorry it's so long. Good luck!!

I'm really sorry that it happened and you lost all the food!

[crazyBMB]

I did have something like this happen to me. I was lucky that there wasn't much in there. Eww! I sympathize.

[OzFreeBird]

Hi

Something similar happened to me a few years back - I unplugged the freezer to run the vacuum cleaner, then forgot to plug it back in, and went on holidays for two weeks. When I opened the door, there was a strange smell, but what was more disconcerting was the CLOUDS of little black midges (they wern't flies as such) that filled the house.

I dug a hole out the back and tossed all the rotten meat into it, plastic wrap and all. I then tipped the freezer onto its side and let the juices drain out, then got a hose with a pressure jet attachment and a big spray bottle of bleach, and proceeded to hose it out at high pressure and spraying it with bleach, repeated 3 or 4 times, and then moved the freezer to an undercover position outside for about a week until the smell had dispersed.

Good luck!

[Daisygirl]

Success with the sludge. A friend recommended lining my wet/dry shop vac with a garbage bag and sucking it up. It was pretty gross, but I didn't have to touch anything. Then I took out the garbage bag and I sucked up a few gallons of bleach water to clean out the shop vac. Still disgusting, but not as bad as I thought it might have been.

Good idea with the baking soda -- that is what I will do to get rid of the stench now.

[Libby]

Oh dear lord, I went through this with the ex. After using store bought cleansers with bleach - this is NOT one time to be frugal by any means!

We used bleach, mr clean magic sponges and tons of paper towels.

After the commercial cleansers were used, we used vinegar and baking soda to make a paste and scrub and wiped it down a few times with that. Then another go with the commercial cleansers.

Once that was done - charcoal briquettes were placed in there on a cookie sheet for a few days - we used the whole tiny bag too! Followed by bowls/dishes of coffee grounds for a few days - buy the cheapest store brand you can find.

Then another scrub with baking soda and vinegar and left lemon wedges sitting open in a dish in there as well as several boxes of baking soda to asorb odors and a few lumps of coal.

After about a wk - wk & half of trying to treat the odour we plugged it in and it was ready to go - I kept changing the baking soda or stirring up the box to refresh it and have it asorb more.

Hope that helps! Let us know what works! (And I agree with putting in newprint in there as well - somehow it soaks up odours)