My apartment smells like rotten food. How can I make it smell nice?
January 10, 2016 10:24 AM   Subscribe

I went away for a moth. Now I'm back and my whole apartment smells like a melange of food that's been left in the garbage for weeks. How can I find the source of the smell and repair the situation?

I tried to dispose of anything perishable before I left, but I did find some extremely moldy orange peels from one orange that I'd tossed in the garbage.

Could just one orange peel stench up my whole apartment?

Aside from that I can't find any rotten food.

I can't locate the specific source of the smell because I have allergies, so my sinuses are stuffed up and I can't smell very well in the first place. Not well enough to say, "Ok, this is the spot."

I'm pretty sure it isn't the refrigerator.

I removed the rotten orange peels.

I opened all the windows but after several hours the place still smells terrible. Simply airing it out isn't helping.

Anything else I can do about this?
posted by trevor_case to Home & Garden (20 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
If the orange was in the trash can, the trash can itself may have absorbed some odors. Also, I would launder any textiles that were within 5 or so feet.
posted by Night_owl at 10:25 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Any potatoes or onions around? Check their undersides. They can sometimes rot invisibly.
posted by Kriesa at 10:29 AM on January 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


Wash down the kitchen with bleach. Inside the fridge, too. If you have a garbage disposal, dump some Dawn or something down it and run it with hot water for a while. Same with the bathroom. Wash all the trash barrels (inside and out). Febreeze the furniture and sprinkle some Carpet Fresh-type stuff on any rugs and vacuum. That stuff smells gross to me, but at least it will fade quickly and maybe neutralize the smell while it's doing so.

Also, are you sure it's rotten food? Could it be a dead mouse or something? Can you check under the fridge and around the baseboards?
posted by clone boulevard at 10:30 AM on January 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I say dead mouse because the worst smell I ever had to deal with was a dead mouse that somehow died in my cat's water dispenser. *I* wanted to die at that one. And it couldn't have been dead for more than 12 hours. Gaah!

(edited to add: Oh! It just occurred to me now, 25 years later, that maybe the mouse was much more dead than I thought, and only relocated to the water bowl BY THE CAT. Huh! That would explain the stench. Dear. God. The. Stench.)
posted by clone boulevard at 10:33 AM on January 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


Yeah we had a moldy lemon stink up our fridge to the point that I couldn't eat anything out of it for a month afterwards. It could be just that.
posted by chaiminda at 10:39 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Have you run water into every drain? A month is long enough for the traps to dry out, letting nasty sewer gases into your apartment.
posted by aws17576 at 10:41 AM on January 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


I would pour baking soda inside your trash can and if you can stomach it, wash the inside and outside out first with soap.
posted by whoaali at 10:44 AM on January 10, 2016


Start by shutting doors to see if you can isolate the smell to one room. It might take an hour or so but this beats cleaning everything and hoping.
posted by firstdrop at 10:53 AM on January 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


When you opened all the windows, were you getting good air-cross-flow? I've had this happen in apartments where all the windows were along one wall, and I had to open the front door and make sure I was getting plenty of flow through the apartment.
posted by Etrigan at 10:58 AM on January 10, 2016


I had a stench like this many years ago and it turned out to be the refrigerator drip pan. Not all refrigerators have them, but they can sometimes be full of festering sludge!
posted by oxisos at 11:08 AM on January 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yes, rotting citrus can stink up a whole apartment and smells just like rotting garbage. I have just had that happen to me over Christmas break (one orange went moldy in a bowl) and it smelled horrendous, but I think you'll find that the smell disapates fairly quickly now that you've removed it from the apartment. This actually happens to me a lot because I love citrus fruit, always have a lot around, and it's always one lemon or whatever molding away and making me thing, huh, I gotta take the garbage/compost/recycling out until I discover that green ball of dusty lemon and remove it. No biggie, but they are super potent.

I would definitely not think it was a rotting rodent or something else hidden in the apartment. It is almost certainly just the orange that caused the smell. Get some airflow going and sprinkle some baking soda in the bottom of the garbage bin at most. I'm willing to bet money by tomorrow things smell remarkably better.

If you have essential oils around you can mix them with baking soda, in addition to putting that in the garbage can you can sprinkle it on carpets and vacuum it up to freshen the place.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:12 AM on January 10, 2016


Do you have any dry goods that weren't properly sealed? I had a bag of soy granules rot during a month away. It took me forever to isolate the smell.. there were no visible signs and well, you don't usually assume that dry goods are the culprit.
posted by redlines at 11:20 AM on January 10, 2016


Nthing dead mouse. If you don't have a pet, do you have a friend willing to lend you a dog or cat to sniff it out?
posted by juliplease at 12:22 PM on January 10, 2016


If the smell is just lingering after thorough cleanup, boiling water with a couple of glugs of white vinegar can deoderize all sorts of aroma in the air.
posted by furnace.heart at 12:24 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ask a good friend with a good sense of smell to locate it. I have a decent nose - my wife asked me to locate a faint stink and I went through three rooms sniffing until we found an old sealed thermos of milk hidden under a piece of furniture by a toddler (thank god it hadn't popped open). Usually people who are good smellers can't stand popourri or strong perfume, so that can give you a hint who might be able to detect the source. If they can't find a discrete source then it might be something dead in the walls.
posted by benzenedream at 12:48 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


You could try spraying some Ozium. It's like industrial strength Febreze. Be prepared to leave the room while it's doing its thing. Also remove any object whose smell you want to keep, for example any food on counters.
posted by danceswithlight at 1:12 PM on January 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


I recently tried the, simmer vinegar in a pot on the stove, cure and it seemed to work. I just used pure vinegar though. Just the cheapo white stuff.
posted by BoscosMom at 1:23 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seconding potatoes or onions. Ugh! When they go, it's truly disgusting.

Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned the garbage disposal, if you have one. Bits of food cling inside and if it hasn't been run in a month it's gonna rot. You can run citrus peels through it, or baking soda and vinegar, or ice cubes, to clean it up.
posted by MexicanYenta at 2:49 PM on January 10, 2016


I have trouble with my sink when I'm gone for a while. Try running some vinegar and boiling water through your sink if you think it might be coming from there too.
posted by Marinara at 8:26 PM on January 10, 2016


Nthing pouring vinegar down the trains. Whenever I've noticed unexplained smells in my place, it's always been the sink.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 1:04 AM on January 11, 2016


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