How to Clean and Deodorize Your Refrigerator Without Harmful Chemicals

How to Clean and Deodorize Your Refrigerator Without Harsh Chemicals

Learn how to clean and deodorize your refrigerator. Knowing the safe methods for cleaning your refrigerator is very important if you want to avoid exposing your family to harmful chemicals.

Cleaning the refrigerator is a lot of work and many people make a big mistake while they are doing it by using harsh or harmful chemicals that find their way into your food.

The good news is that there are natural and safe ways to clean and deodorize your refrigerator.

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Why You Need to be Careful What You Clean Your Refrigerator With

Many people do not realize just how dangerous it is to use popular cleaners including disinfectants and bleach when cleaning the refrigerator.

This is because of the way this appliance is designed to trap in cold air and in turn traps in chemicals right where you are storing your food and drinks. This allows those chemicals to seep into your food and in turn, you eat them, causing harm to your body.

What Can You Clean Your Refrigerator With Safely?

Because of the risks of using popular cleaning supplies, you need to consider what is best to use for cleaning your refrigerator to get it clean, kill germs, and not expose your family to harmful chemicals.

The best thing you can do is to use natural food items for cleaning your refrigerator so you can rest assured that you are not exposing your family to inedible chemicals.

The best cleaning supplies for your refrigerator include simple things right out of your pantry like vinegar and baking soda.

If you find that you need something more powerful you have a great option of a food-safe cleaner you use every day, dish detergent.

How to Clean Your Refrigerator

There are two types of cleaning sessions you should do in your refrigerator. Start simple with cleaning that is done once a week. This is the removal of anything old or questionable.

By doing this regularly such as on trash night as part of your weekly routine you can keep your refrigerator from growing science experiments.

This is a quick clean-out that allows you to get things out before they can smell and make a note on whether or not it is time for a deep clean of your refrigerator.

The second type of cleaning is the nitty-gritty deep cleaning where you pull everything out and scrub out the stuck-on messes and rearrange everything nice and neat.

This is usually done every few weeks. Sometimes longer depending on your schedule or how messy your refrigerator gets.

If you are spring cleaning you want to make sure you take the time to add this deep clean to your to-do list.

How to Clean Stuck-On Messes

After reading that, you may be wondering how you can possibly get those tough stuck-on messes clean without using some heavy-duty chemical cleaners.

The good news is that the stuck-on dried-up jelly, soy sauce, and other common spills can be cleaned without using harsh chemicals.

When it comes to cleaning truly stuck on messes in your refrigerator, the trick is to use vinegar and warm water. Simply put the warm water in a measuring cup, add some vinegar and mix very well, then spread the mixture on the stuck-on messes.

Allow the warm acidic vinegar water to sit and work its way into your stuck-on messes, making them easy to scrub or scrape out of the refrigerator.

Pull out shelves that are grimy and use steel wool to scrape away all of the stuck-on spills to help ensure that you get it all off without issues.

Note: Do not pour boiling water on glass shelves as the rapid temperature change can lead to cracking and breaking.

How to Get Rid of Odors in Your Refrigerator

Cleaning your refrigerator with vinegar has the added effect of easily killing off odors and the bacteria that cause them without adding chemical fragrances.

To help keep it smelling fresh or to give it a refresh before cleaning you can place baking soda, activated charcoal, or a mix of the two into your refrigerator to absorb odors.

How to Make Cleaning Your Refrigerator Easier

Cleaning the refrigerator is a lot of work and getting stuck on messes out can be a workout. The good news is there are a lot of great things you can do to make cleaning your refrigerator easier.

Silicone refrigerator mats are a great invention that makes it easy to pull out and clean away spills without having to pull the whole shelf out.

Healthy habits like emptying old food out on trash night every week can help make it easier to keep it clean and odor-free.

Teach everyone to leave containers upright and always to check that lids are fully closed.