Imagine this "worst case scenario" — a gallon of sour milk was spilled in your car, house or room and the smell roams around the entire area. How do you get the smell out?

When raw milk is left standing for a while, whether in bottled form or puddle form, it turns sour. This is the result of fermentation, where lactic acid bacteria ferment the lactose inside the milk into lactic acid. This is similar to fermentation that occurs to make cheese from other food products that use active cultures.

The odor of spoiled milk is traditionally very difficult to remove. Fortunately, there are some relatively simple and inexpensive solutions. The sooner you clean the smelly spot, the greater your chances of restoring a fresh scent to your room, house, refrigerator and house-on-wheels.

Aside from that, the smell of spoiled milk can be quite hard to remove on your clothes, especially your baby’s clothes, since babies have frequent access to milk and are most likely to spill milk on their clothes.

Baby clothes can be expensive and the kids grow out of them before they can possibly wear them. Often these adorable little outfits are passed on to another child; however, even though they are in good shape, they still have that telltale odor of spoiled milk that is almost impossible to get rid of. As always, there are ways around this dilemma.

Sour Milk Smell Removal

Avoid spilling milk if you can. Also, do not cry over the spilled milk if you indeed spilled it anyway. Do something about it instead.

• To remove stale milk smells, you first need to remove all the spilled stale milk. Use warm soapy water and perhaps some washing up liquid and clean up the affected area thoroughly first.

• After the mess has been cleared up, soak the area in white vinegar and mop up with paper towels. Put up with vinegary smell for about a week and after that, not a sign of vinegar smell or that horrible milk odor will remain.

• You can use an air freshener in the affected car to ensure a pleasant smell. Just try to let it dry for as long as possible. Soon, the milk smell will have disappeared from your surroundings.

• Use a commercial leather cleaner and odor eliminator on the leather upholstery of your car. Your dealer may carry these products. Allow the area to dry completely: residual moisture can cause mildew. Use a hair dryer or fan if necessary, being careful not to scorch carpet fibers with the hair dryer.

• You can also pour baking soda over the area where milk is spilled. Sprinkle some cold water on top of the baking soda and let it stand overnight. You can vacuum it the next day to remove the residue. If the smell still remains, you can try treating it with an enzyme odor remover.

• Take a bottle of club soda, stick your finger inside and shake to get a fizz going. With your finger still in bottle, spray on the stinky milk stain. Get it wet but not soaking. The smell might be worse at first but that it will go away as the whole thing dries unlike the untreated milk odor, which will only worsen as time passes by.

• You can also use brake cleaner if you’re particularly desperate, but use it moderately and only on carpets, rugs or hard surfaces. Just put a small dab on a clean cloth, blot the milk stain and rinse with soap and water.

If it’s baby clothes that are affected by the milk stench, then you could do the following: Fill the washing machine with hot water. Fill it at least high enough for a medium load. Add a cup of laundry detergent with one cup of dish washing detergent. Run the machine for a few minutes to mix the combination well. Turn the washing machine off.

Put the smelly baby clothes in the solution in the machine and leave them there. Let them soak overnight in the solution. Then, In the morning turn the washing machine on and let the clothes run through a full cycle. Add a tablespoon of vinegar to the rinse cycle. Vinegar is the choice product for general bad odor removal.

Finally, add a second rinse cycle to make certain that all the detergent residue gets rinsed out of the clothes. The baby’s clothes, as well as your clothes, if you’ve tried this method on those as well, will be smelling fresh and clean by the end of the process so be proud of your work.

Sour Milk Smell Removing Products

• DooDoo VooDoo will get rid of your sour milk smells, among other smells. Its pet-friendly formulation works where other products usually fall short. It’s a stain remover for most bodily fluids, but it also doubles as a deodorant of sorts. Invented by the founders of two federally licensed animal charities & a nonprofit spay/neuter clinic, DooDoo VooDoo proprietary chemistry neutralizes odors differently from other products you may be familiar with. Bottom line is that it’s very effective in removing odors and stains.

• Earth Care Odor Removing Bag: This is used by Pest Control Professionals to remove dead rodent odors, urine and feces odors, skunk odors, as well as odors from chemicals and cigarette smoke so sour milk stink should be a cinch for it. Earth Care Bags do not have to come into contact with the dead rodent or the rancid milk stain. Simply place the bag near the odor and in 24 hours, the odor will be gone. Earth Care adsorbs odors rather than masking them with a fragrance. It covers up to 200 square meters and can last 3-4 months in use or indefinitely in plastic wrap.

• Febreze seems to be the product of choice when it comes to various types of odor removal, so it’s only natural that it’s included in sour milk smell removal as well. Febreze uses a chemical compound called cyclodextrin that has been used in household and custodial cleaning products for quite some time. Smelly hampers, sticky rental cars, sleeping bags that reek of camp fire; you name the smell, Febreze can quell. You can get it at most supermarkets.

Sour Milk FAQ

* What are the factors that affect milk spoilage?

In raw milk, the presence of lactic acid-producing bacteria, under suitable conditions, ferments the lactose present to lactic acid. The increasing acidity in turn prevents the growth of other organisms, or slows their growth significantly. During pasteurization however, these lactic acid bacteria are mostly destroyed.

Pasteurization of cow milk initially destroys any potential pathogens and increases the shelf-life, but eventually results in spoilage that makes it unsuitable for consumption. This causes it to assume an unpleasant odor, and the milk is deemed non-consumable due to unpleasant taste and an increased risk of food poisoning.

* What should you do to avoid getting spoiled milk?

In order to prevent spoilage, milk can be kept refrigerated and stored between one and four degrees Celsius in bulk tanks. Most milk is pasteurized by heating briefly and then refrigerated to allow transport from factory farms to local markets. The spoilage of milk can be forestalled by using ultra-high temperature (UHT) treatment; milk so treated can be stored un-refrigerated for several months until opened.

* What are the kinds of milk, and which of them takes the longest to spoil?

Sterilized milk, which is heated for a much longer period of time, will last even longer, but also loses more nutrients and assume a different taste.

Condensed milk, made by removing most of the water, can be stored in cans for many years, un-refrigerated, as can evaporated milk.

The most durable form of milk is milk powder, which is produced from milk by removing all its water. The moisture content is usually less than 5% in both drum and spray dried milk powder.