Do I need to discard a fridge that has had rotted food in it for weeks?

September 6, 2020 5:38 PM

I am helping to administer a grant program at my company for families impacted by a recent fire. One family has asked for a replacement fridge - they stated after removing the rotted meat, etc., which had been in their fridge for multiple weeks it was impossible to clean it and make it usable again. I sympathize, and would like to support this request. Any suggestions on what I can point to in my rationale for approving it?

(TL;DR: I want to support a family asking for a grant from my company [their employer] for a replacement fridge. How can/should I do that?)

posted by arnicae to Grab Bag (13 answers total)

I've restored some pretty gross fridges to a decent state before, but it requires quite a bit of work and, more crucially, time. Not everyone has the luxury of not using a refrigerator for a few weeks while getting it to a point where anything you put in it doesn't take on a foul odor.
posted by wierdo at 5:45 PM on September 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

This might seem weird, but I would tweet at Matt Paxton, one of the clean-up specialists on the TV show Hoarders. They deal with fridges of varying degrees of horrifying all the time. He's active on Twitter and seems pretty responsive when people ask him questions.

(Based on the shameful amount of time I've spent watching the show, they do seem to throw them out pretty often if there's been rotten food inside.)
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:53 PM on September 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Bean counters in business like numbers. Perhaps get an estimate from one of those companies that cleans up gross things (like dead bodies) after disasters, for restoration of the fridge to usability. Assuming this is more than the cost of a new fridge, you could use that as supporting evidence.
posted by fritley at 5:57 PM on September 6, 2020 [16 favorites]

If the issue is odor, janitorial supply vendors have power in a bottle. Also heat lamps facing the surfaces help kill bacteria as well.
posted by Freedomboy at 5:57 PM on September 6, 2020

Ummm, not sure I can help here - I think you want evidence it is unrecoverable, right?

I have cleaned rotten meat out of freezer, and dead dried maggots out of a fridge compartment. I froze it again to make it easier. It sucked.
I just used a lot of cleaning products, then left baking soda in it, and alternately let it dry out, and froze it. But... it worked?


I think the best argument you could make is that it would take a few days to clean, so, stretch that out to a week, and you could argue that they need a fridge sooner than that.

But whatever happens, see if you can get the fridge to someone willing to clean it, because it almost definitely is cleanable.
posted by Elysum at 6:03 PM on September 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

If you're looking for precedent/justification for getting rid of it, just search for "Katrina fridge." Plenty of people didn't have their houses flooded, but evacuated the city for a long time during which it had no power, and fridges were ruined gross messes because of it. Lots of people solved that problem by vigorously taping the thing shut and waiting for disposal, so I think there's plenty of public precedent for not wanting to keep something that had meat rotting in it for weeks.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 6:08 PM on September 6, 2020 [10 favorites]

I know anecdotes aren't evidence, but my insurance company didn't even blink at replacing the fridge in our house that was without power for around a week (after a fire). I was surprised that they wouldn't just want to clean it out, but the guy doing the cleanup just said it wasn't worth it and the insurance adjuster readily agreed. And that was after a week; I can't imagine it after several weeks.
posted by Betelgeuse at 6:58 PM on September 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Came in to say what bowtiesarecool said about Katrina fridges. I bet news stories from fhe time will quote experts on why fridges abandoned during natural disasters are a public health problem.
posted by entropyiswinning at 7:41 PM on September 6, 2020

The rationale for approving the grant would be that a decent refrigerator, that does not smell of rotten meat, is a small way to help the employee maintain their dignity after a disaster.
posted by wg at 8:26 PM on September 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

When they returned, they found that their refrigerators were filled with decomposing food. This food was so rotten that it had dissolved plastic, corroded metal, and dissolved rubber refrigerator liners[citation needed]. Even residents who suffered no flood damage lost their refrigerators in this way....

garbage collection was not fully restored for many weeks... Refrigerators were assigned their own specific pickup date, and were considered too hazardous to be mixed with other storm debris. Only waste collectors trained in the handling of hazardous materials and armed with special equipment and hazmat suits were assigned the task of collecting refrigerators.

Due to all the advertising for fancy appliances, a basic refrigerator costs far less than many people imagine the cost of a fridge to be, a new fridge shouldn't be a large ask for this type of grant program.
posted by yohko at 8:40 PM on September 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

I think that for the most part, most things in a home after a fire need to be replaced due to smoke damage. We had a fire in the house I grew up in, and where I still live today, and even with 30+ years and a full renovation, the smell of smoke is still present in the attic. I imagine that the refrigerator's vents and circulation system smell of smoke. I think the same could be said for the rancid smell of food- can one really clean out that smell?

Another cause might be the shortage of cleaning products right now due to Covid-19, I still see people searching for cleaning products on Facebook often.
posted by momochan at 8:43 PM on September 6, 2020

Properly cleaning it may require partial disassembly which would void the warranty, and may present a safety hazard if not done by a certified technician.
posted by Sophont at 11:05 PM on September 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

For a grant application I would not even go into the details of whether the old fridge is recoverable or not. The situation is they don't have a usable fridge.
The risks this causes are the obvious - spoiled food causing food poisoning and also increased travel to shops will increase the risk of catching Covid. Plus if they do become infected they will not have the inability to self isolate for very long as they will still need to go out to buy fresh food.
posted by Lanark at 3:17 AM on September 7, 2020 [7 favorites]