I spray the inside of my kitchen trashcan with Lysol disinfectant spray every time the garbage bag is replaced. As clean as my trashcan is (or so it seems), there are certain foods that can turn my recently sanitized trashcan into a harbinger of noxious odors, and I always end up throwing away a new garbage bag with barely anything in it.

For me, the culprits are disposed apple peels, apple cores, raw chicken parts, and the foam tray the chicken meat is placed in.  The disposed apple parts, especially the Red Delicious variety, oxidize extremely fast, causing rapid browning, decomposition, and the release of that rotten fruit odor.  It can wreak havoc inside the trashcan and the smell sticks to the inner walls even when the garbage bag is thrown out.  The same goes for disposed raw chicken, and within 24 hours of being thrown out, that rotten meat odor starts to leak out of the trashcan, even with the lid on.

My solution to prevent this from ever happening again is by placing an ordinary plastic shopping bag in the freezer to serve as a secondary trash bag that only houses disposed food that cause offensive odors.  By the time I’m ready to throw out the garbage, I just take the bag out of the freezer and stuff it inside the larger garbage bag.  Don’t worry, since the disposed food freezes quickly, there’s no risk in odor transference.

I’ve been doing this for a week and it’s worked out rather well.

~ Kin