The Best Air Fresheners To Put In Your Fridge

There are two types of air freshener to use in a fridge: odor removers, and fragrance creators. The best odor remover for most cases is baking soda, but activated carbon or rolled up newspaper work great too. The best fragrance creator is citrus-scented essential oils. I’ll explain how to use all of these options below.

You should never use unnatural chemicals to clean your fridge. The chemicals can float around the fridge and end up in your food, possibly causing harm to your body.

You Decide: Remove Bad Odors, Or Add Pleasant Ones?

The first thing you need to decide before choosing an air freshener option for your fridge is if you only want to remove bad odors, and just leave your fridge smelling like nothing at all. Or, do you want to add a whole new scent to it that will leave it smelling like a new flavor of your choice?

Most people are going to prefer just removing bad odors. After all, few places get filled with as many weird smells as our refrigerator, especially if we accidentally let food go bad.

You should not try to remove bad odors and add new scents at the same time. This is because the air freshener you use to remove bad odor molecules will also remove pleasant odor molecules, making the pleasant smell weaker and also making the odor remover get “used up” faster.

Let’s talk about your odor removal options first.

Air Fresheners That Remove Bad Odors In A Fridge

Odor Removal Option #1: Air Freshener Devices

There are a few air fresheners specifically built for removing bad odors from your fridge.

These devices typically work by using materials that are designed to “grab” odor particles out of the air. As odor particles float around the fridge, they come into contact with these odor removal devices, and get “stuck” on them. This leaves your fridge smelling fresh.

Let’s take a look at some air freshener options:

  • NonScents Refrigerator DeodorizerClick here to view.
  • Arm & Hammer Fridge FilterClick here to view.
  • Odor-absorbing Bag In Fridge-safe Plastic Case – Comes in a 5-pack – Click here to view.
  • Ozone generator for your fridge – This special device does not “grab” odor, instead it produces harmless ozone gas which floats around your fridge and destroys odor particles – useful for cleaning odor from every nook and cranny – Click here to view.

Odor Removal Option #2: Baking Soda

Baking soda has interesting molecular properties that allow it to interact with many odor-causing particles. When this interaction happens, the odor-causing particles become neutralized and get “stuck” to the baking soda. This means that the bad odor in your fridge will end up in your baking soda instead.

This is the most commonly chosen option for continuous odor removal, solely because most people already own a box of baking soda. To use baking soda as an air freshener, just leave some baking soda sitting out in a bowl in your fridge.

You should not use the whole box of baking soda as an air freshener, unless you want a bunch of nasty odor particles to end up in the food you cook later on. A great way to just use a bit of baking soda at a time as an air freshener is to pour a few spoonfuls of it into a coffee filter. Then, tie up the coffee filter with a rubber band, and set it anywhere in your fridge.

As an added bonus, you can make more of these balls of baking soda and place them anywhere in your house or car where you want to remove some odors – just be sure to securely fasten it or baking soda will spill out.

I recommend the following products:

Odor Removal Option #3: Activated Carbon/Charcoal

You may have heard of activated carbon, also known as activated charcoal. It’s a chemical compound that interacts strongly with most odor-causing particles in the air. When odor particles touch it, it “grabs” them out of the air, cleansing the bad odors from the local atmosphere.

Activated carbon can be used just about anywhere to remove odors. A popular odor removal tool for living rooms to add an activated carbon filter to an air purifier. But did you know that you can buy raw activated carbon and use it anywhere you want – including in your fridge?

To use activated carbon to remove odors from a fridge, simply pour some of it into an open bowl or container, and leave it in the fridge near the source of the odor. It’s as simple as that – the carbon will absorb odor molecules, helping cleanse the fridge of nasty smells.

I recommend this raw activated carbon:

Odor Removal Option #4: The Newspaper Method.

You can do this simple trick with nothing but a few pages of newspaper.

Just crumple up several pages into a ball or multiple balls, then place them in the fridge near the source of the bad odor. Ideally, you want to place them near the air vent that blows cold air into the fridge, so that all of the circulating air will flow across the newspaper. However, you can also just put them in any open space you have.

If you want to remove serious bad odors from the entire fridge, you can place as many crumpled up newspaper pages as can fit into your fridge. Let them sit for a few days and then remove them, and take a whiff of your newly cleaned fridge.

This method works simply because newspaper is very porous and can absorb the odor particles that are flying around your fridge.

If you don’t have a newspaper at home, you can also use packing paper which works just as well:

Air Fresheners That Add New Scents To Your Fridge

Tired of your fridge smelling like rotten eggs? Or does it smell like nothing at all, and you want to change that?

The good news is that there are a few easy ways to add a new scent to your fridge. Some people recommend cutting up citrus fruits or other foods and leaving them open in your fridge. But leaving open food in your fridge is exactly the type of behavior that could cause bad odors in the future if they go bad.

You should never use synthetic or unnatural chemicals to add fragrances to your fridge, because the chemical particles can float around and land in your food. Instead, I recommend using essential oils that produce a scent that will mix well with your food’s natural odors. The best choice for this purpose is citrus fragrances.

There are two easy ways to freshen your fridge with citrus oils.

  1. First, you can put a few drops of oil onto a cotton ball or wash cloth and simply leave it anywhere in the fridge.
  2. Second, you can lay out a small bowl of jasmine rice and pour a bit of oil into the rice. The rice will quickly absorb the oil, then slowly emanate it out as a fragrance. The fun part about using these is that you can also set these bowls on your dining table when company comes over to emanate a lovely fragrance. You can also use them anywhere else in your house, such as your kitchen counter.

Here are some great citrus oils to freshen your fridge, and the jasmine rice if you want to create your decorative air fresheners: