Mark Modrall wrote:

Hi...

We have a 5-year-old maytag refrigerator that has started to stink in
the last month and we can't figure out where the smell is coming from.
We've cleaned underneath, vacuumed out the drip pan, removed all the
food, but there's this smell that's particularly prevalent when you open
the door. We've put baking soda in, but we just can't seem to get rid
of it.

My wife says it smells like the compost bin, not like a mouse crawled
in and died.

Any idea where smells can hide in the guts of a fridge?

Thanks
-Mark

Once I had a stinking fridge. It would stink even with the door shut.
Someone had spilt some milk which had run out of the drain at the back of
the fridge and it collected in the plastic tray which is located on the
back of the fridge on top of the compressor where it would stay nice and
warm. Water condensed inside the fridge would be regularly channelled
through the drain and into the plastic tray, to prevent the mouldy stuff
from dehydrating and dieing. After a few weeks it was fairly smelly.

Chris