I kept some really ripe French cheese (Pont L’Evecque) at room temperature in a tupperware tub for about a month. It was divine, but damn it stank. Now it’s all been eaten, the Tupperware tub is still retaining the smell really badly, despite several washings and overnight soakings in soapy solution. If it were mine, I’d pitch it, but it belongs to my landlady, so I need to return it to its former odor-free state. I have sodium bicarbonate resting in it at the moment, but it still doesn’t seem to be working. Any suggestions?
White vinegar, or a 10% bleach/water solution, it the bicarb doesn’t work.
Vinegar. Just plain white vinegar. Put some in the container and slosh it around and that should take care of it. If it doesn’t, try filling it with vinegar and leaving it overnight. I recently left some milk in a spill-proof cup I use at work. It was in there for more than a week. Oh, my God, it was so bad. I soaked the bottle and the lid overnight in vinegar and the smell was gone (and that was the first time I had to do that, usually the smell is gone after a good sloshing).
Piff it and buy her a new one.
You’ll just have to endure a Tupperware Party to get it. Think of it as your just karma for eating skanky cheese.
Righto, just pitched the bicarb and substituted distilled vinegar.
Maybe I can combine a Tupperware with an Anne Summers party as well…
Hmm, seems I didn’t get rid of all the bicarb, as the thing just blew its lid off in a comedy stylee, surprising the hell out of my wife and cat.
Oh yeah, guess I should have mentioned that possibility.
So, did the vinegar work?
For removing milk odors from plastic, I’ve found the best method is ammonia. Just a little (a few teaspoons) poured into the clean container, and then close it up for a while. Let’s say an hour, since you’ve got a really bad smell. Then open and wash again. Any kind of ammonia works.
I learned this trick from a school lunch lady when we were trying to clean dozens of donated milk jugs for a Vacation Bible School snack program. Some peole hadn’t washed the milk jugs very well before donating them to be used for Kool-Aid, and the smell was horrible. But just a few drops of ammonia saved the situation. I’ve since used this trick on a Tupperware container that held homemade French toast that ripened…someone took it out of the freezer to rearrange things, and forgot to put it back in…didn’t find it for a few weeks. We tried everything to salvage this large, expensive container…charcoal, vinegar, etc. Finally just used it for catfood for a few years, until I learned the ammonia trick. Took the lingering scent right out.
So try it for your cheese odor…can’t hurt!
Actually, on the milk jugs, it only needed a few minutes to work.
You also might try letting it sit out in the sun and fresh air for a while. That has worked for me in the past. Bonus: it can get rid of tomato stains on Tupperware, too.
Does anyone use Tupperware[sup]TM[/sup] anymore? Are they still in business? Do they still have sales parties?
Virgin Tupperware[sup]TM[/sup] has a natural stink to it that I’ve never seen erased. With cheap, throwaway plastic containers available in any supermarket nowadays, what would be the reason to use Tupperware[sup]TM[/sup]?
Not only do the thin cheapies have no odor that I can discern, they can be washed and used again for a few cycles at least.
A little too well: now the tub smells of vinegar. :smack: I’ve put it on the windowsill to air out and get some rays, then I’ll wash it again.
The stuff I have is called “Multindo”, has a picture of a horse on the logo, and was made in Indonesia.
Did you try the ammonia?
That was going to be my suggestion as well…works wonders here in Las Vegas, however I believe jjimm lives in Great Britain, and well, if he left it outside, it would fill up with rain and eventually smell like stagnant water and breed mosquitoes, increasing his chances of contacting West Nile disease, risking the formation of e-coli in the little plastic container, causing the neighbor to be poisoned, leading to the eventual arrest and public hanging of jjimm…so I think attending a Tupperware party and purchasing a new tub is probably a better idea.
I wouldn’t know where to get any.
After two more washes and drying out, it now no longer smells! Hooray. I avoided the public hanging.
It now contains my home-made manuka honey granola with macadamias and dried cranberries. I bet you’re all jealous.
Just for future reference, ammonia is usually found in the grocery store by all the other cleaning products…bleach, dish soap, window cleaner. DON"T EVER MIX IT WITH BLEACH! It is extremely effective for washing walls and windows, and essential for cleaning hairbrushes and combs. It is also extremely cheap. I use it mostly in solution to go around and wipe off the dirty pawprints around lightswitches, edges of doors, all those places on the woodwork that get sticky and dirty from people touching them with dirty hands as they go by. And washing hairbrushes…nothing else dissolve the gunk on a hairbrush better. And for getting out odors!
I keep those Milton tablets that you use for sterilizing baby bottles. Every once in a while I use one to clean my leftover containers. Not only do they sterilize they take of the stains created by sauces.
Milton sterilising fluid or tablets, you know, the stuff you use for baby bottles.
It gets coffee and tea marks off cups, cleans plastic, ceramic and glass, and it’s non toxic and not too stinky.
Plus it’s easily available in any supermarket and most corner shops (big market, what with the bottle-feeding mothers and all).
Seriously, any 99 Cent store or any Vons/Safeway/Ralphs/Kroger/Shnucks/Whatever will have ammonia.