Bless containers and Tupperware – they help us with food prep, meal prep, and bringing home Mom’s curry. But as versatile as they are in the home, they can get stained and smelly pretty fast – leading to an expensive and drastic next step: being thrown away (hey, when that curry stain and smell from last Christmas just doesn’t go away, what else can a girl do?).
The good news is that there are ways to salvage your stained and smelly containers – and you won’t have to spend money on harsh chemicals either.
How to get rid of lingering odours from your food containers
While there are many tips on the internet on how to get rid of lingering odours from your containers, most of them are wild and wacky (let’s say we won’t be trying charcoal or newspaper tricks any time soon). The best product to use that absorbs odours is bicarbonate of soda.
No doubt you have a box stocked in your cupboards; its versatility is unmatched when it comes to cooking and cleaning.
Bicarb is an inexpensive product that really works. There are two ways you can use it: the wet method and the dry method.
The wet method
I find this works with containers that have intense odours from heavily spiced stews and curries, or when those leftovers have been forgotten in the fridge for a couple of weeks longer than they should have. All you’ll need for this is bicarbonate of soda (up to 1/2 cup) and plain tap water, and the smelly container, of course.
- Wash the container with hot soapy water first to remove food and grease residues.
- Fill the container with tap water and add a few tablespoons of bicarb (or up to 1/4 cup if the container needs real TLC). Wet the container’s lid and sprinkle a layer of bicarb on top.
- Close the container with its lid and leave it to sit for at least an hour or overnight.
- Pour out the solution, rinse thoroughly and dry completely before storing.
The dry method
I quite like this method because it’s quicker and less labour-intensive than the wet method (and because I’m a lazy cleaner). It works for removing slight to intense odours. While it uses more bicarbonate of soda than above, the good news is that you can reuse it to keep your bins from smelling.
- Wash the container with hot soapy water, removing food and grease residue.
- Completely dry the container and its lid.
- Fill the container, at least halfway, with bicarb. Replace the lid and let this sit for at least a couple of hours or overnight. I like to give it a good shake after an hour to ensure any clumpy bicarb bits get replaced with dry granules for higher absorption.
- Pour out the used bicarb (use it in your bins or another container if it still smells reasonably fresh). Rinse with water to remove excess residue and dry completely before storing.
