Household appliances are running amok

I don’t do this very often, but I am sending out a desperate plea for help. My kitchen smells like pickles and I’m not sure what to do about it.

We just bought a new house — and boy, does it have personality — and one of the rooms most full of personality is our kitchen. It’s hard to describe, but I shall do my best. The house was built in 1978 and the kitchen still has the original cabinets, which can only be described as dark wood and well-used. Our kitchen also has mirrors with tan lines on the wall behind the stove. To accompany the cabinets and mirrors, there is a white and black electric stove and a white refrigerator.

Well, since moving into the new house, husband Bryan and I have had our eyes on the kitchen. We know we want to do something with it, we’re just not sure what yet. Our 3-year-old son, Joshua, insists it should be orange. I guess that’s why there are no famous 3-year-old interior designers.

Anyway, we are definite that we are going to replace the appliances, as they have begun plotting against us. When we moved in, we noticed the dishwasher was ... yucky. We tried to clean it, but to no avail.

Then the garbage disposal went belly-up. Both were replaced a couple of weeks ago and all has been fine.

Until Monday night.

On Monday night, I noticed our refrigerator smelled strongly of pickle juice. “Uh oh,” I thought. “I guess I left the lid open and the smell escaped.”

I wish.

I’m pretty sure I know what happened. Joshua knows how to unscrew and rescrew lids now. I’m pretty sure he went after a pickle (he loves pickles) and didn’t rescrew the lid on tight enough. Somehow, in all the commotion of every day life, the pickle jar got scooted to the back of the top shelf and knocked over.

And the pickle juice escaped.

I spent about a half hour washing everything in the refrigerator with soap and warm water. While I did learn something new (the recommended shelf-life of a soda is nine months), I did not get rid of the smell.

Then I tried lemon-scented cleaner. Now my refrigerator smells like pickle-lemon-scented cleaner. I can say from experience that if that scent ever hit the household cleaning goods aisle, it would not be very popular as it doesn’t smell nearly as good as it sounds.

So now I’m left hoping the smell will go away on its own.

I have a feeling deep down inside that the refrigerator is laughing at me. It knows it’s on the way out and it’s getting the final dig in before it goes. And, no, we are not going to buy an orange refrigerator to make the kid happy. But a new refrigerator purchase is a long time away.

In the meantime, if anyone out there knows how to get rid of the smell of pickle juice, please let me know.

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