A Few Drops Of Vanilla Extract Can Rescue A Smelly Refrigerator

You ever open your fridge and find yourself playing a surprise game of "what's that smell?" Maybe it's from some rancid leftovers you shoved to the back of your fridge and forgot about or some produce left in the crisper that has currently mutated into an unidentified fungus. All you know is that it reeks in your fridge and you really don't want to store your food in a place that has an odor best described as "decay meets KitchenAid." What can you do to eliminate those weird smells?

Perhaps the most common method to fixing a reeking fridge is putting a box of baking soda in there. The reason this method is so common, aside from how cheap baking soda is, lies in baking soda's chemical structure, which helps to neutralize or eliminate foul odors and stains into inoffensive sodium salts (via Reader's Digest). You could also follow the advice of Better Homes & Gardens and use activated charcoal to help remove any foul odors lingering in certain parts of your fridge. Worst-case scenario? You may have to just do a full recon and scrub.

But wait, there's another pantry staple that, when used correctly, can make your fridge smell much better. How exactly can a simple bottle of vanilla extract help to keep your fridge from smelling like bad produce and week-old leftovers?

Putting a bottle of vanilla extract by itself inside the fridge won't do much. You're going to need more materials, which The Kitchn suggests are a few cotton balls and a small dish. According to this method, pour some vanilla extract onto a cotton ball and then put it in the dish. Place the dish in the fridge and keep it closed for a few hours to allow the vanilla smell to fill the interior. 

Unless you're really into the scent of vanilla, The Kitchn assures us that this is only supposed to give a very subtle, light aroma of vanilla to your refrigerator. You shouldn't expect this to make your entire fridge smell like fresh-baked vanilla cake or ice cream, but to have a very faint but noticeable scent to it. 

This trick can also be used in other parts of your kitchen too. If you have a cupboard or pantry that smells just a bit funky, you could put a vanilla-soaked cotton ball in there. MSN tells us that there's an "old real estate trick" that involves putting a few drops of vanilla extract onto a lightbulb before turning it back on. It seems that as long as you could use vanilla extract on something, you could make your whole house smell like a bakery or a Yankee Candle store. 

If you consider your vanilla extract to be too valuable to use just to make your fridge smell nice, there's another cheap alternative that will give your fridge a lemony fresh scent (pun intended).

As Hunker tells us, all you need for this trick is a lemon (or any other piece of citrus fruit), some salt, baking soda, and a small dish. Cut the lemon into "1-inch thick" pieces and sprinkle one to two tablespoons of table salt onto the lemon, followed by two to three tablespoons of baking soda. Place the lemon on the dish and leave it in the fridge for a few hours. This will not only supposedly remove foul odors faster than regular baking soda, but also give the fridge a light citrusy scent. The lemon can be left in the fridge for four to six days until it needs to be discarded.

Lifehacker gives us a similar trick, which involves using the peels of oranges, lemons, or grapefruits than the actual fruit itself. Simply sprinkle the empty peels with salt and leave them in your fridge. The salt will not only work as a natural preservative for the fruit peels but also absorb certain orders, allowing your fridge to have a fresh fruit smell while remaining free of unpleasant odors.

Citrus rinds aren't just useful as a natural scent absorber, but they also have a myriad of other useful applications too.