Freshen Your Fridge With Citrus Peels And Salt
We all know about keeping a box of baking soda in the fridge, but the TipNut blog suggests a citrus peel packed with salt can kill odours and create a pleasant scent.
Photo by fdecomite.
You don’t need to even peel an orange, grapefruit, lemon, or two limes to make this simple air freshener—just cut it in half and thoroughly remove the actual fruit. Then throughly fill the empty shell with salt, place it in a bowl, and stash it in a corner of your fridge. The salt absorbs and neutralises odours and preserves the fruit skin, while the shell should lend its clean-smelling scent to your stale fridge air.
We haven’t tested this one out at Lifehacker East’s kitchen lab, but there’s a grapefruit looking due for a beta test on the counter. Dig the citrus scent? Check out WikiHow’s guide to making citrus skin freshener, and hit the link below for an alternate preparation of the fridge freshener. Keep your food stash fresh in a different way? By all means, tell us how in the comments. Salt Packed Citrus Shells: DIY Air Freshener [TipNut.com]
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Our building janitor put dirt and orange peels in the garbage can. I was wondering what that was about. Does Martha Stewart tweet?
Capone
I've found that a handful of freshly ground coffee in an old (clean!) sock does the job very nicely. But the activated charcoal advocates are spot on for the very best solution.
stubear
If you do use orange peels, don't push them to the back of the refrigerator and forget about them. If you've never had a moldy orange or lemon in your refrigerator, you can't imagine how bad/weird it smells. It smells kind of like a chemical. In fact, a friend of mine was ready to buy a new refrigerator because it had developed a "weird chemical smell." When I opened her refrigerator, I knew right away what it was; when I looked, I found a moldy lemon.
Taycee
Activated charcoal is the best odor remover. Trying to cover stink with herbs or citrus peel may taint the flavor of fatty items, particularly dairy.
Invest in a small handheld steam cleaner, and you'll be able to get rid of the little particles that get between in small places that your rag will never reach.
Santizer: 1 TBS bleach to 1 Gallon hot water will also help. You don't need to rinse this. You can also do similar with white vinegar and water, but I forget the ratio offhand.
dragynphyre
@Deprong Mori: +1
My fridge used to smell terrible (I live in a house with 3 other guys) due to having a variety of foods out in the open (fish, chicken, etc). It was so bad that water in my Brita filter absorbed the smells/flavors and my water tasted terrible. I cleaned and cleaned, but that damn smell wouldn't go away. Eventually, when we all went home for Christmas, I threw away everything in the fridge and thoroughly cleaned it and replaced the Brita. Now we put all of our leftovers, etc in air-tight Pyrex and tupperware in the fridge and it smells good (we cook a lot of chinese, Indian, and fish) and my water/milk/butter tastes like it should.
My tip: Used tea bag packaging to freshen your bags, and smell natural. Needs to be good tea, of course.
Just stick one of timer sprayers in there. Every 15 minutes your food gets coated with a delicious lavender mist. Pretty soon you'll be farting bouquets.
Angry Numismatist
@Deprong Mori:
I use baking soda myself and my fridge isn't smelly. Just keep it clean and keep smelly items in airtight containers and it's good.
The whole point is that masking odors by using another one isn't the right way to do things.
You really don't want to perfume things. Laundry dryer sheets, air fresheners, etc. The commercial scents are absolutely disgusting anyhow, and something like this is half-baked.
Basically if something is clean, it shouldn't smell like what it's not. Your laundry shouldn't smell like flowers, your granite kitchen counter shouldn't smell like citrus, your mahogany desk shouldn't smell like pine.
Deprong Mori
If salt is so good at absorbing odors, how can you smell the citrus peel?
RosaSiren
@+ Watch video
Activated charcoal (and real science) wins.
Uma
clean the frig with white vinegar
its the best
numike
What about a pair of cotton balls with some vanilla poured over them? The following morning the fridge is a delight to open. And yes, I agree one needs to keep their fridge clean - but the vanilla helps out a lot in between cleaning jobs or just after you cleaned and the odor remains.
Sam Wille
@T-man: Can we replace the orange hack with this?
Brad
Why do you push the baking soda myth to which you debunked months, if not years ago?
@T-man:
I've had similar results with plain old charcoal bricks for the grill. I had a terrible smell in my fridge that I couldn't track down even after a good cleaning, and charcoal did the trick.
friendlynerd
@Deprong Mori: not to argue against your case here cuz i agree, adding smell to a fridge wud be a bad idea for the same reason u stated..but i think this tip is for people who are prone to stinking out their fridge..i for one wud prefer orangy milk to fishy milk any day
i've never tried this but hopefully the peel will absorb some of the bad odours and not just compensate with a stronger smell..otherwise i'll stick with the baking soda trick
When our power went out for a week after Hurricane Ike, our refrigerator smelled like the power had been off for a week. It reeked. I went to the pet store and got a jar of activated carbon (~$9) for fish tanks and put it in the back of the fridge and in a couple of day the odor was totally gone. We've left it in since then and it's kept our refrigerator completely odor free.
[www.petco.com]
T-man
@rogsim:
"multiple fridges"?
You must have a BIG kitchen...one stove for breakfast...
one stove for dinner...
We've used lemons and salt for this for years and it works very well. When we squeeze a lemon, we just fill half the peel with salt. It doesn't actually add any odour, but removes them and delicate foods are not tainted in any way. Recommend it.
SaniyaMacrotainer
@Kevin Purdy: +1 for "there's a grapefruit looking due for a beta test on the counter".
@Deprong Mori: hey! give me some credit. im a massive slob as far as my fridge goes, but it doesnt stink! i just keep everything sealed up tight.
danger the pirate ★♥ has a fake star and a fake heart, now if he only had a brain.
This is why I have multiple fridges in my kitchen. One just for milk, one for butter, one for vegetables, etc.
@mfusion:
Yes, common sense says that you minimize odors by keeping the fridge clean and odoriferous items in airtight containers. I keep roasted garlic in my fridge and it certainly doesn't smell like garlic.
If you're a total slob, you're going to have odor problems. Don't try to mask odors, get rid of the source.
Deprong Mori
i wonder how salt compares in odor absorption compared to baking soda.
i've personally found that cleaning the fridge regularly keeps the smell down. not completely emptying it out but getting in there and just wiping down the surfaces. especially the horizontal surfaces and places where surfaces meet. then twice a year i empty it out into a cooler and take my steamer to it.
mfusion
Bad idea. You really don't want to add fragrance to your fridge.
Some items (notably dairy products) will absorb odors very readily. Milk and butter are very common items that will end up smelling like the primary fridge odor. They should really smell like milk and butter, not like orange peel.
Sorry, but this tip is a massive fail.
Deprong Mori
Activated charcoal works very well, as many people here have pointed out.
It is true you can go to an aquarium supply store and get activated charcoal in a variety of quantities. Also chemistry supply stores carry it.
In a previous article,
[lifehacker.com]
Activated charcoal is mentioned to refill the basic water filtration systems.
I have found that when removing the old charcoal, it is still very useful as an odor-trap for my refrigerator.
I have poured the charcoal into a rinsed-out wax-coated disposable fountain-soda cup, into which I have cut small air holes around the top. It is an inelegant but incredibly (re)useful method for odor control.
William F Wulf
@rogsim: i have a fridge and a stinkbox made out of ice cream
I wouldn't be so fast on the citrus. I had some lemons in the fridge a bit too long, and while the fridge had a nice lemony scent, so did my cheese. The only way I knew the cheese wasn't bad was that I bought it the week before.
Some other commenters have mentioned activated charcoal, which actually does absorb odors, not just cover them up.
Ryan Luff
My mom uses coal to take the odor out of the fridge, and since it doesn't have any odor it works great!!!
Xiu MeiQuincy
Can I extrapolate this idea (charcoal / activated carbon) to deodorize rooms in my house? Feasible? Practical?
PinoGlaucus
@Deprong Mori: massive fail? that's harsh...if you want to avoid smells and keep the milk milky then just put a bowl of salt in the fridge sans fruit.
b3n