Oooo Oooo that smell

[The_Duckslayer]

My son and his wife just bought a house. It is a forclosure bank owned unit and they are getting a great deal on it. It does need some work here and there but they can move in on day one with no problems. Trouble is since it sat for so long the fridge and the dishwasher are very "ripe" and full of mold. Need to get all the ideas that there are out there as to how we can get rid of the mold and the smell. Thanks for your help! Take care and N Joy the Hunt././Jimbo

[BoxMN]

I know this is copout answer but maybe consider new fridge and dishwasher. You can find them pretty cheap right now. Then they would have a beer fridge for the garage

Otherwise, I think that simple green works pretty good for cleaning, or I know ecolab makes a cleaner that smells like orange (not sure of name) that has worked pretty dang good for us.

And when done cleaning put a couple baking soda boxes in there, old school way!

[The_Duckslayer]

Already has a beer fridge in the garage with the same problem! They are draining the piggy bank pretty low at the moment and would like to keep them if possible. We are getting them a washer and dryer for their wedding present so that is covered. Thanks for the help! I plan to print this and try them all! Have a good one././Jimbo

[Tom7227]

bleach and warm water - if you can put it in a spray bottle and hose it down just be sure to protect the eyes and clothing.

[Fishinguy40]

Years ago a friend of mine had a circuit breaker trip that provided power to his meat freezer. It went unnoticed and everything inside spoiled. I guess the freezer smelled pretty ripe. For weeks he tried everything... soap and water, bleach, baking soda, vinegar but no matter what he did he could not get rid of the smell. Finally someone told him to drag it outside and open it up and let it sit in the sun for a couple days. Believe it or not it worked. Seems between the UV and exhange of air it cleaned out the smell.

[fishwidow]

We had a GE compressor fail under warranty. It was unattended for several weeks and ended up smelling so bad it would knock your hat off and make your eyes water. We had a huge pfolonged fight with the manufacturer who finally replaced the whole thing. They insisted that we put dry newspaper and some odor absorbing activated charcoal in the unit and leave it in there for a while. I don't remember the name of the stuff, but it was readily available at Walmart and local hardware store for about ten bucks.

It helped but the odor was not able to be completely eliminated. Keep in mind that this was a full refrigerator and freezer that had meat, fish, vegetable, milk and every other thing you can imagine in it, and that it sat for a pretty long time in that condition. If the odor is milder, this stuff and the newsprint might work.

[zepman]

First, you need to clean all the mold off any of the surfaces that is visable. Secondly, you need to kill any of the remaining mold with a disinfectant/sanitizer. Dishwasher is easiest to handle as you can run a chlorinated product through the system to clean it out. Two or three cycles would work the best. Refrigerator you would need to manually clean/disinfect and sanitize. Do not wipe the sanitizer dry...let it air dry. Problem with both appliances is the likeliness of the inner core being contaminated with mold and then there is no hope.