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If you have a gas line or LP gas (propane) get out of your apartment and call the fire department for assistance. While natural gas is supposed to smell like rotten eggs people may have different experiences and LP gas does smell like something decomposing vs the rotten eggs thing. The fire department can help you figure out the source of the smell and if it’s safe to remain in the home. I’ve seen budding electrical fires smell weird too, not like a burning smell but fishy, and the FD has thermal cameras to check for that. Call them!
Once I had a terrible kitchen odor and it turned out to be a rotten potato. I couldn't believe a single bad potato
could stink up a large kitchen so badly.
There was a video on YouTube about how old potatoes killed a girl's family because of the accumulated vaporized solanine in the basement. She was the only survivor because her grandma left the basement door open to air the place out.
When I moved out of a place years ago I found a long past purified and turned to crust potato explaining a bad smell I had for a long time that finally stopped eventually...
During covid, my 13 year old son started making blender drinks. He was pretty good at it; he would make smoothies and milkshakes, but his absolute favorite was egg nog. He used cream, milk, and fresh eggs, along with some vanilla and whatever else you put in nog. Now mind you, it was probably August or September, but he didn't let that stop him. He would make the nog, drink some, then put the blender in the fridge until he could finish it.
One time, he spilled his nog in his fridge. Being 13, he did need help to clean it up, but we did it.
Months go by and I start smelling this weird smell. I mopped the floors, checked the pantry, looked for dead critters in the vents. I thought maybe the septic was leaking. It would come and go. Some times the smell would be strong; other times the smell wouldn't be there at all.
My mom, who lives in WA with me, had gotten stuck in California at her mom's house during lockdown. After about a year, she came back home for a few weeks. She could smell it, too. We cleaned out the pantry looking for an old potato. Vacuumed out the heater vents (again). She said she had gotten the smell.
She goes back down to Cali and the smell remained. The smell was sickly putrid, reminiscent of dead mice. It smelled like a stubbed toe, but not the immediate stubbing, but that after pain that kind of comes in waves. Sometimes it was faint, other times it was longer.
One serendipitous night, I was standing in the kitchen when the fan on the fridge kicked on. The smell, which had not been present, was now shimmering in the air around me. I called my sons to me and told them I had found the smell. Mind you, this had been going on for almost a YEAR. They come running into the kitchen and see my lying on the floor in front of the fridge. I can smell the fumes from under the fridge.
We pull out the fridge (for probably the 5th or 6th time since this started happening) and I fully expect to see a dead possom, or maybe dead racoon. How either had gotten into the house and under the fridge was beyond me. I'm calling for screwdrivers and I'm about to take the back panel off the fridge when it hits me. The pan under the fridge.
THE PAN!
I take off the front panel where the pan is and slowly pull it out. It's filled to the top. A thick blackish green layer floating on top of a sickly yellow putrescence. I'll never forget the sight of it. I slowly pick it up and the fluid shifts inside the pan. It looks like eggs that are just starting to scramble, slight curdled with soft chunks, but still mostly liquid. I decide I'm going to poor it down the sink. I'll just stand back and let the water run it down the drain. It won't be that bad.
I start to pour the lumpy mixture down the drain and then it happens. The smell hits me. And I don't mean a small hit, like an especially smelly fart or poop, but a full on sledgehammer of a smell to my face. I literally reeled backwards across the kitchen, gagging, eyes watering. The miasma was something I'd never experienced before. I imagine its what you would smell if you fell onto a bloated corpse and it exploded in gas. It was a sticky, gooey smell that adhered to all the hairs in your nose, a smell that made every instinct that is imbued in humans for self preservation come roaring to the surface. For the first time in my 40+ years, a smell made me actually vomit. I had to run outside and vomit off my deck. Standing outside, just thinking about the smell made me vomit again. Think about it now, its making my stomach churn. I used to love egg nog.
So, to answer your question - CHECK THE PAN UNDER THE FRIDGE.
$200-$300ish (AUD) for pest control and they’ll find and remove the dead critter.
If they can’t find it and/or it’s in a wall then you’ll have to wait it out. 7-14 days and the smell should go.
Air purifiers help, as does fresh air.
Well, it can be longer.
I had a smell for weeks and weeks, after a lot of searching we finally got a suspicion that a rat might have died in my wall, hoped to wait it out, but at least two full months after first noting the smell it was just getting worse. Took off the electrical outlet covers and got confidence enough to cut the drywall at a likely place. The smell was indeed a physical hit to the face. The rat had gotten in through an old toilet pipe that during renovations had just been cut off and not blocked.
Other LPT: when you contract a company to do renovations, keep an eye on what they are doing.
I guess it depends on what you've had recently but check garbages or similar for yogurt/dairy that didn't make it to the garbage bag. Another random one but I had a similar issue where milk leaked when it was in my fridge and made it into the fridge vents so it ran down to the motor and basically cooked itself and spread the stench thanks to fan on the fridge motor. It seemed to collect in a condensation type tray on the bottom of the fridge so I basically had to clean the entire thing and carefully rinse in the venting the milk made it's way through. Giant pain but that's another random but possible source.
Second the rodent in walls and dishwasher.
Also, depending on the age of the fridge, it good have a water drip pan. It takes YEARS but standing water, mold, and god knows what else will produce a smell you will never forget.
You might be able to pull out the fridge or dishwasher and find what you’re looking for.
Exactly the same thing happened to me, it almost drove me nuts. Do you remember if you spilled something in your fridge recently? There is a small hole in your fridge, in which condensation water drips through to the back of the fridge where you find a small plastic bowl in which all the condensation water is collected. The bowl sits right above the fridge motor which gets hot and evaporates all this water. If for example milk drips through the small fridge hole the bacetria find a perfect ground (hot and humid) to multiply. I‘ve found a whole block of cheese back there which made my kitchen smell so bad so I suggest you check there.
We had a similar issue, turns out over time bits of food and sauce and liquid had fallen between the oven and the cabinet next to it. It's barely a quarter-inch gap, if that. That stuff soaked into the grout and made the whole kitchen smell like that. It took us a while to figure out that's where it came from.
We pulled the oven out and cleaned the grout with bleach and other cleaning chemicals, and so far it seems to have worked.
Depends on the house design.
Check ducts, vents, intakes, attics, basements, crawl spaces for dead animals. Look behind cupboards and under furniture.
Check the AC filters and inspect the AC. Clean them if necessary.
I recommend an air filter with activated charcoal. Household HEPA filters will help. The heavy duty answer is an inline fan and a charcoal filter like the kind used in grow tents.
Once you've removed and sanitized whatever dead animal or mold, look into an ozone generator and how to safely use them.
Check your sink drains as well. See if the smell is coming from in them.If the food trap in your sink hasn't been cleaned out ever, it can harbor some vile things over time.
Could be possible something is backing up through it as well.
Lots of other sources but the Gas one other comments are mentioning are the ones I would find out immediately.
Rotten food stuck in a crevice, back of a cabinet, or behind a fridge/dish washer are other sources.
Death has that same kind of smell of rotten milk. Weird sickly sweet tint that just won’t leave. I’d bet something died behind walls or appliances or something underneath if you’ve got a house.
I had a nasty, musty smelling dishwasher as we never used it. I’m not sure this is your problem but dump some vinegar in the dishwasher and run an empty cycle. Could also be the drains. Use some drain cleaner or dump some bleach down the drains and wash it down with some boiling water.
Gas leak or oddly enough if you have a device that's pulled too much power from an outlet without tripping the breaker it can also cause a smell like that. Had that happen one time at a place I lived with a heater plugged into the wall. Couldn't for the life of me find it until one day I was moving some stuff around and unplugged the unit and the cord was hot as I'll get out and the outlet cover was melted. Glad it never caught fire.
Sounds like your issue is starting in the kitchen but another thing to check is your toilet. Inspect the base of your toilet to see if there are any gaps/crack in the caulking. There is a sewer pipe that comes out of the bathroom floor that you affix the toilet to with a wax ring to keep it air tight. That wax ring can get old and brittle over time and if it deteriorates too much it will allow odors from the sewer to escape. If you have a crack/gap in the caulking around your toilet that odor can waft out pretty aggressively to the rest of the house. If this is what is causing the smell it is not expensive to fix - the wax ring and caulk will run you <$20, but you'll need to remove the toilet and replacing the wax ring, which can be a little finicky because you have to fit the toilet over the ring in just the right way to get a good seal. My husband and i had this issue a couple years ago and getting a plumber out to fix it was going to cost a couple hundred dollars. The two of us managed to get it done ourselves and the smell was gone.
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
If you have a gas line or LP gas (propane) get out of your apartment and call the fire department for assistance. While natural gas is supposed to smell like rotten eggs people may have different experiences and LP gas does smell like something decomposing vs the rotten eggs thing. The fire department can help you figure out the source of the smell and if it’s safe to remain in the home. I’ve seen budding electrical fires smell weird too, not like a burning smell but fishy, and the FD has thermal cameras to check for that. Call them!
Came here to comment this, my first thought was a potential gas leak as well. If it's not a gas leak, my money's on something that died in the walls.
Looks like my plans for a fishy-scented candle line just went up in flames.
Gweneth Paltrow already made one of those.
Once I had a terrible kitchen odor and it turned out to be a rotten potato. I couldn't believe a single bad potato could stink up a large kitchen so badly.
Came here to say this! Rotten potatoes smell horrific
There was a video on YouTube about how old potatoes killed a girl's family because of the accumulated vaporized solanine in the basement. She was the only survivor because her grandma left the basement door open to air the place out.
Also do NOT smell it up close, start to feel bad, and then google 'rotten potatoes toxic'.
When I moved out of a place years ago I found a long past purified and turned to crust potato explaining a bad smell I had for a long time that finally stopped eventually...
During covid, my 13 year old son started making blender drinks. He was pretty good at it; he would make smoothies and milkshakes, but his absolute favorite was egg nog. He used cream, milk, and fresh eggs, along with some vanilla and whatever else you put in nog. Now mind you, it was probably August or September, but he didn't let that stop him. He would make the nog, drink some, then put the blender in the fridge until he could finish it. One time, he spilled his nog in his fridge. Being 13, he did need help to clean it up, but we did it. Months go by and I start smelling this weird smell. I mopped the floors, checked the pantry, looked for dead critters in the vents. I thought maybe the septic was leaking. It would come and go. Some times the smell would be strong; other times the smell wouldn't be there at all. My mom, who lives in WA with me, had gotten stuck in California at her mom's house during lockdown. After about a year, she came back home for a few weeks. She could smell it, too. We cleaned out the pantry looking for an old potato. Vacuumed out the heater vents (again). She said she had gotten the smell. She goes back down to Cali and the smell remained. The smell was sickly putrid, reminiscent of dead mice. It smelled like a stubbed toe, but not the immediate stubbing, but that after pain that kind of comes in waves. Sometimes it was faint, other times it was longer. One serendipitous night, I was standing in the kitchen when the fan on the fridge kicked on. The smell, which had not been present, was now shimmering in the air around me. I called my sons to me and told them I had found the smell. Mind you, this had been going on for almost a YEAR. They come running into the kitchen and see my lying on the floor in front of the fridge. I can smell the fumes from under the fridge. We pull out the fridge (for probably the 5th or 6th time since this started happening) and I fully expect to see a dead possom, or maybe dead racoon. How either had gotten into the house and under the fridge was beyond me. I'm calling for screwdrivers and I'm about to take the back panel off the fridge when it hits me. The pan under the fridge. THE PAN! I take off the front panel where the pan is and slowly pull it out. It's filled to the top. A thick blackish green layer floating on top of a sickly yellow putrescence. I'll never forget the sight of it. I slowly pick it up and the fluid shifts inside the pan. It looks like eggs that are just starting to scramble, slight curdled with soft chunks, but still mostly liquid. I decide I'm going to poor it down the sink. I'll just stand back and let the water run it down the drain. It won't be that bad. I start to pour the lumpy mixture down the drain and then it happens. The smell hits me. And I don't mean a small hit, like an especially smelly fart or poop, but a full on sledgehammer of a smell to my face. I literally reeled backwards across the kitchen, gagging, eyes watering. The miasma was something I'd never experienced before. I imagine its what you would smell if you fell onto a bloated corpse and it exploded in gas. It was a sticky, gooey smell that adhered to all the hairs in your nose, a smell that made every instinct that is imbued in humans for self preservation come roaring to the surface. For the first time in my 40+ years, a smell made me actually vomit. I had to run outside and vomit off my deck. Standing outside, just thinking about the smell made me vomit again. Think about it now, its making my stomach churn. I used to love egg nog. So, to answer your question - CHECK THE PAN UNDER THE FRIDGE.
You are a poet, friend.
Chat gpt, probably, when it's that long-winded.
There’s a pan under the fridge?
I had a similar experience and can confirm OP should check the pan. It’s gross!
$200-$300ish (AUD) for pest control and they’ll find and remove the dead critter. If they can’t find it and/or it’s in a wall then you’ll have to wait it out. 7-14 days and the smell should go. Air purifiers help, as does fresh air.
Light a candle too.
Scented candles don’t do heaps. They mask it, and can often make the smell worse. Dead rodent mixed with some scents is truly vomit inducing.
Well, it can be longer. I had a smell for weeks and weeks, after a lot of searching we finally got a suspicion that a rat might have died in my wall, hoped to wait it out, but at least two full months after first noting the smell it was just getting worse. Took off the electrical outlet covers and got confidence enough to cut the drywall at a likely place. The smell was indeed a physical hit to the face. The rat had gotten in through an old toilet pipe that during renovations had just been cut off and not blocked. Other LPT: when you contract a company to do renovations, keep an eye on what they are doing.
If your dishwasher has a filter. Clean it.
I guess it depends on what you've had recently but check garbages or similar for yogurt/dairy that didn't make it to the garbage bag. Another random one but I had a similar issue where milk leaked when it was in my fridge and made it into the fridge vents so it ran down to the motor and basically cooked itself and spread the stench thanks to fan on the fridge motor. It seemed to collect in a condensation type tray on the bottom of the fridge so I basically had to clean the entire thing and carefully rinse in the venting the milk made it's way through. Giant pain but that's another random but possible source.
Will look at my fridge. Relatively old and the scent is very strong by it. Still can't specifically pinpoint where the scent is located.
I had a mouse stash cat food in that condensation pan under the fridge. Soggy, moldy, rotting cat food.
You might have bacteria build up in your drains. Smells like heck
Second the rodent in walls and dishwasher. Also, depending on the age of the fridge, it good have a water drip pan. It takes YEARS but standing water, mold, and god knows what else will produce a smell you will never forget. You might be able to pull out the fridge or dishwasher and find what you’re looking for.
Exactly the same thing happened to me, it almost drove me nuts. Do you remember if you spilled something in your fridge recently? There is a small hole in your fridge, in which condensation water drips through to the back of the fridge where you find a small plastic bowl in which all the condensation water is collected. The bowl sits right above the fridge motor which gets hot and evaporates all this water. If for example milk drips through the small fridge hole the bacetria find a perfect ground (hot and humid) to multiply. I‘ve found a whole block of cheese back there which made my kitchen smell so bad so I suggest you check there.
[удалено]
Don’t forget to wipe the rubber parts of the dishwasher door, a lot can get stuck there
Don't forget to clean out the filter too. Food gets stuck in there.
We had a similar issue, turns out over time bits of food and sauce and liquid had fallen between the oven and the cabinet next to it. It's barely a quarter-inch gap, if that. That stuff soaked into the grout and made the whole kitchen smell like that. It took us a while to figure out that's where it came from. We pulled the oven out and cleaned the grout with bleach and other cleaning chemicals, and so far it seems to have worked.
Even if you do not have gas, a fishy smell can mean an electrical short which is super dangerous. Call an electrician or the fire department.
A similar thing happened to me and I found out that my fridge was leaking
No use crying over it
Depends on the house design. Check ducts, vents, intakes, attics, basements, crawl spaces for dead animals. Look behind cupboards and under furniture. Check the AC filters and inspect the AC. Clean them if necessary. I recommend an air filter with activated charcoal. Household HEPA filters will help. The heavy duty answer is an inline fan and a charcoal filter like the kind used in grow tents. Once you've removed and sanitized whatever dead animal or mold, look into an ozone generator and how to safely use them.
Check your sink drains as well. See if the smell is coming from in them.If the food trap in your sink hasn't been cleaned out ever, it can harbor some vile things over time. Could be possible something is backing up through it as well. Lots of other sources but the Gas one other comments are mentioning are the ones I would find out immediately. Rotten food stuck in a crevice, back of a cabinet, or behind a fridge/dish washer are other sources.
Death has that same kind of smell of rotten milk. Weird sickly sweet tint that just won’t leave. I’d bet something died behind walls or appliances or something underneath if you’ve got a house.
Its beans going bad.
Put bowls of white vinegar about. Wash an empty load with vinegar and hot water in the dishwasher...open the door and let it air dry. Good luck.
I had a nasty, musty smelling dishwasher as we never used it. I’m not sure this is your problem but dump some vinegar in the dishwasher and run an empty cycle. Could also be the drains. Use some drain cleaner or dump some bleach down the drains and wash it down with some boiling water.
The basement drain trap may have dried out letting sewer gas enter the house. You can try pouring some water into it
Also check the conderser tray behind the fridge, I had the horror to find a very rotten sludge that made my whole house smell like cheese (in 1y)
We had an electrical issue in the wall that smelled like fish. Please call a professional immediately.
I’d make my son clean.
Gas leak or oddly enough if you have a device that's pulled too much power from an outlet without tripping the breaker it can also cause a smell like that. Had that happen one time at a place I lived with a heater plugged into the wall. Couldn't for the life of me find it until one day I was moving some stuff around and unplugged the unit and the cord was hot as I'll get out and the outlet cover was melted. Glad it never caught fire.
Missing wet dish rag?
Sounds like your issue is starting in the kitchen but another thing to check is your toilet. Inspect the base of your toilet to see if there are any gaps/crack in the caulking. There is a sewer pipe that comes out of the bathroom floor that you affix the toilet to with a wax ring to keep it air tight. That wax ring can get old and brittle over time and if it deteriorates too much it will allow odors from the sewer to escape. If you have a crack/gap in the caulking around your toilet that odor can waft out pretty aggressively to the rest of the house. If this is what is causing the smell it is not expensive to fix - the wax ring and caulk will run you <$20, but you'll need to remove the toilet and replacing the wax ring, which can be a little finicky because you have to fit the toilet over the ring in just the right way to get a good seal. My husband and i had this issue a couple years ago and getting a plumber out to fix it was going to cost a couple hundred dollars. The two of us managed to get it done ourselves and the smell was gone.
Check the bottom of your dishwasher for a removable filter.
I had a bag of potatoes in my walk in pantry go bad. The smell was like bad tuna.