Home, rotten-smelling home

Home, sweet home – after a 1,000+ km drive from Denmark through Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the UK in one day, I was looking forward to getting home.

As I was unlocking the door to my house, I heard a faint beep and thought the carbon monoxide detector must have run out of battery.

I walked through the door and smelt a faint, unpleasant smell, but dismissed it in my rush to get to the detector to switch it off. Struggling to get the battery out of the detector I finally realised that the detector only switches to battery when the mains power is off, and if the mains power is off, the freezer must be off too.

Not knowing at which point during my two week absence the power went, I opened the freezer and was hit by the most horrible, life-changing smell of rotten meat. The worst smell came from a pack of prawns and even though I quickly closed the freezer again, that smell haunted the entire house for two days, before we managed to get rid of it.

We emptied the freezer and cleaned and deodorised it 5 times before we managed to get rid of most of the smell. A slight smell is still lingering in the freezer itself, but we’ll give it a week to disappear, before we start shopping around for a new freezer.

If there’s a lesson for me to learn here, I guess it is threefold:

• Never, ever leave prawns in the freezer when I go on holiday.
• If I find myself in a similar situation again, disconnect the freezer and wheel it outside, before I open it.
• Consider having someone look after the house the next time I go on holiday.

TAGS: travel stories