The Adventure Kings fridge/freezers have fast become one of the most essential pieces of a 4WDers camping gear. These fridges are incredible versatile and represent unbeatable value-for-money, but as with any fridge or freezer there may come a time where unpleasant odours or smells may start appearing.

As with everything, prevention is better than a cure. When it comes to avoiding a smelly fridge it is best to put into practice some preventative measures during and after each use to stop any odours from developing in the first place. But if this unfortunate situation does happen to you there are several simple solutions that are cheap and readily available in most supermarkets that can completely eliminate the rank smell coming from the depths of your trusty fridge/freezer.

The primary causes of an overwhelmingly bad smell in your fridge/freezer are leaving food to rot unattended, or by excess moisture which can cause mould to form.

For rotting food the solution is simple, unpack your fridge/freezer as soon as you get home this seems obvious but is one of the most common mistakes made by lots of tired campers who just want to hit the sack.

As for mould, you can easily prevent this by ensuring you thoroughly wash and air dry your fridge/freezer after each use and store with the lid open (even just a crack), in a cool dry place where possible.

Try to avoid using your fridge/freezer for storage of things such as cooking gear in between uses, despite the obvious space saving benefits.

If you notice a mysterious pong coming from your fridge/freezer your first course of action should be to check the contents to ensure that none of your food or drink has gone bad or has passed its expiration date. If you do find a particular piece of food is starting to turn, eliminating the smell may be as simple as removing the offending item, this will also help to preserve the rest of your fridges contents from grubby germs.

Often you will find that all your food is perfectly fresh and no individual item is emitting the odour, and even when you remove everything and let your Kings fridge/freezer air out the smell remains! Other times a smell won’t even develop until after you have finished using your fridge/freezer and it has been turn off and stored away ready and waiting for the next family camping trip.

In these situations, your next move should be to thoroughly clean the inside of your fridge/freezer with warm soapy water. The Adventure Kings range of fridge/freezers include handy baskets and dividers to help keep your fridge organised and tidy. when cleaning your fridge/freezer interior don’t forget to give these baskets and dividers a thorough wash down as well!

In a vast majority of cases thorough wash with dish-soap and warm water will eliminate bad smells in your camp fridge, but in the case of extremely foul odours you might find that a faint smell remains.

Your next step if the smell hasn’t gone while the fridge is empty is to cut a brown onion in half and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours. Often this is all that’s needed to absorb any foreign smells, and it costs a few cents and a minute of your time.

In more stubborn cases, people have found that placing a dinner plate covered in baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) inside the fridge and closing the lid for 2-3 days will soak up most of the bad odour leaving you with a clean and fresh smelling fridge.

In extreme cases where an unpleasant smell remains, ensure that food matter has not become stuck in hinges or small crevices and check that the outside of your fridge is also thoroughly clean. Kings fridges have removable handles so take these off and ensure nothing has spilled and found its way in behind the mounting locations. Once you are 100% confident your fridge is thoroughly clean, a handful of activated charcoal (your local pet store should have these) inside your Kings fridge/freezer for as long as 1 month even while it is running. Activated charcoal is extremely effective at absorbing all organic molecules, thereby removing any smelly organic particles it encounters in the air surrounding it.

If you have an Adventure Kings portable ice box or cooler the same principles will apply to avoid or remove bad smells so you can enjoy camping all summer long with cold drinks and fresh food and no stinky offputting smells, to ruin your experience!