I often prepare my lunch at home and bring it to my office in a plastic food box, to warm it up in the microwave we can use there. I normally wash my lunch box immediately, but despite that lately I had a problem. I prepared vegetable soup and, even after washing with plenty of soap and hot water, it still smells bad.
I tried washing it again and again, airing it, and even washing it with bleach! But nothing seems to work. It looks like the bad cauliflower smell has worked itself in the plastic. Bleah!
I’d really appreciate any suggestion. And by the way, is washing particularly problematic dishes with bleach a good idea at all? My mother suggested it, and she said she always uses it for smelly kinds of dirty dishes, like fish, or dried up tomato sauce.
Put a few heaping tablespoons of baking soda in the bowl, fill it with water, and leave it sit overnight. That should take the smell out better than bleach.
Ah yes, the age old problem of plastic food container stench. To those of us that our lunch to work, it’s a bane to our existence.
To get the nostril gouging stench out, I usually toss some baking soda into the container, seal it, then leave it over night. Washing it out with lemon juice from a fresh lemon works too.
For really stubborn odors toss a piece of charcoal into the container (not the kind with lighter fluid in it!!!) close lid and leave overnight or two days.
That usually does it. Also, since you heat your food in the container, spray your container with a very light layer of cooking spray before tossing your food in. This helps prevent odors from seeping in.
This is what I thought as well, but believe me, the amount of time and soap and elbow oil I spent on that darn box makes it impossible for me to believe it is still dirty - at least, the way I see dirty.
For odors, I second the baking soda soak and lemon juice afterwards. If that didn’t work, I’d just throw the thing out or not use it for food anymore. (Maybe you can store something else in it?)
I have no idea what the chemicals would do to the plastic in your lunchbox, but I might use the same concentration of bleach that is suggested for sanitizing cutting boards on it to see what happens. Here’s a link describing how to do it: http://thecookskitchen.net/2007/09/14/back-to-basics-cutting-board-cleaning/
The bleach might not get the smell out, but after that, you can be sure it’s clean.
Well, they aren’t covering the smell, they’re getting rid of it. And just because a smell is there, doesn’t mean there are any actual food particles or bacteria there. Plastics have a very similar molecular structure to fats, and a lot of molecules from food (like ones that smell,) bind to fats very easily, and so can often bind to plastics easily, especially when heated (like in a microwave.)
So the plastic container is clean, the molecules of the plastic have just “trapped” a few smell molecules, for lack of a better word, in their structure and they just get released very slowly. Fast enough for you to smell them, but not fast enough for them to not smell before the next time they get used.
Mentioning bleach to the wife had her panicking. Just looking at bleach, she implies, makes you die!!! Does anybody have any sources for the (relative) safety of bleach?
Perhaps I can offer some comfort. Bleach, right out of the bottle is already watered down to 6% sodium hypochlorite. To use it, you should always water it down further. One part bleach to twenty parts water is the strongest concentration you’ll ever need (13 ounces to one gallon of water.) That’ll kill all bacteria, all viruses, and all fun-gooses. At that strength, it still has a sharp smell, and the vapor night cause your eyes to water, but it won’t harm your lungs or eyes. For most uses, you won’t need any more than a quarter-cup bleach to a gallon of water ( 1 to 32.)
So, right out of the bottle, your wife is right, it’s pretty fierce stuff. You always water it down, though, so it isn’t so scary.
Polypropylene plastic will always pick up odors and color stains. If you get rid of the spoilage smell, it will probably smell of bleach. You’re better off using a non-staining plastic, such as Rubbermaid Stain-Sheild®.
It’s first on the list of ingredients for beer. 2 ounces mixed with 5 gallons of cold water for half an hour, and everything gets sterilized. Rinse thoroughly with hot water and Roberta’s your aunt.
NEVER mix bleach with ammonia. That’s a recipe for Bad Mojo. It’s also the user name of a Doper.
Soaking with baking soda seemed to have done the trick! Now I’ll consider buying something different, these really get far too stained, oily and smelly for my comfort.
So yeah, don’t rinse your food in bleach. If you dilute the bleach, then rinse the surface thoroughly, you should be fine. Am I correct in assuming this is the container that holds your whole lunch and not a container that the food is going to be touching directly? If that’s the case, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you were talking about a plastic container holding leftovers, I might rinse it out more thoroughly, and leave it to soak in plain water overnight after using the bleach solution, if you’re really worried.
All of the advice in this thread sounds like a big investment in time and elbow grease for a plastic container.
Please read this other thread about tossing things when they are too much trouble and replacing them is so cheap. You could get a set of cheapo food containers for a couple of dollars and save yourself a lot of grief.
You could do what I do and not use plastic containers. I bring leftovers in glass containers with plastic lids. They came as a set (wedding gift) and wear like iron. (except we’re slowly losing lids) Smells don’t soak into glass, and since the lid usually isn’t in much contact with the contents, the lids don’t get smelly, either.