OMG: List your car on CL and bail out now! That is such a funny "yes, life happens" moment.
Annie'71

Eeewwwww!

Try nature's miracle on it....if it works on cat pee, it should work on spoiled milk....

LOL. How about a sippy cup half filled with milk, which them rolled under the front seat. It was completely forgotten until a deadly stench appeared in the car. No one knew where the smell was coming from and it took a few searches to find the congealed sippy cup stuck in the rails/motor of the seat. I happened to be in a parking lot when I found it and promptly threw it in a nearby dumpster. Gag!

Ok, I'll play:

I had a cat that needed to be enticed to eat medical-grade, special canned cat food. `Not tasty, but somewhat more palatable when slightly warmed up and therefore better-smelling (at least from the cat's point of view).

I used to set the cans on the edge of the woodstove for a few minutes to warm a bit. One day I was hustling around getting ready to leave for a trip and forgot about it.

Closed, sealed catfood can + extended exposure to 500F = kapow!

And then I had cat-food smush all over my living room: on the ceiling, walls, windows, curtains, sofa, rug, books and stuff on the shelves. But the worst was on the stove itself where it cooked on and made the most awful stink!

How much product can there be in one dinky-sized pull-top can? I swear I've cleaned up gallons of the stuff in the intervening years. I occasionally still find a dried-up crumb of it stuck in some recess in the door and window trim and crown moulding.

L.

Oh, you poor thing... I once had a package of pork chops slide out of a grocery bag in the trunk of my car -all unnoticed by me of course. A few days later, I found it, covered in maggots. As bad as that was though, I think yours is a more difficult problem because of the smell. Once you get it all cleaned up, you might try putting multiple bowls of vinegar in the car overnight. It will absorb some of the bad smell. Probably have to do this every night for a week....

Oh, no! :-(

Maybe leave an open bag of charcoal in the car for a few days?

I guess it's a small consolation that you caught it when you did. Imagine if you were driving along and exploding sour milk hit you?

Bestyears,
Do you still eat pork after seeing that? I don't like it now and rarely eat it, I know I'd be turned off it forever after seeing that.

Imagine how the cat laughed at liriodendron when the can exploded. Yuck, that must have been such a stinky mess.

Thanks to these stories, I am going to be very careful with any groceries, especially in the next few days while we're having 90 degree, humid days.

Edited to add:
Kswl's comment reminded me that I hung a bag of charcoal odor absorber in my car after my niece threw up. I cleaned the car but was afraid of lingering odors and it seemed to work. I bought it at Lowes and I think it's meant to hang in musty places. I hung it off the pocket in the seat back.

This post was edited by hhireno on Thu, May 30, 13 at 9:41

I would try shampooing absolutely everything that could even had a drop of milk on it with the skunked dog recipe: Until you remove the residue, the smell will linger. You can't cover it or absorb it away, you need to clean it. If it got onto the seat belts it likely dribbled into the crack between car seat and back and from there, who knows!

1 quart hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 Tbsp shampoo or dish soap (either one in a scent that you like and can tolerate till it dissipates)

You need to work like an auto detailer - or hire one! What a mess and a PITA - good luck.

I had noticed a lovely citrus scent in my one month old van for a couple of days one summer. how odd I thought. One day it was a putrid rotten orange smell and it kept getting worse. Finally found an exploded no longer frozen orange juice concentrate- the large size under the way back seat. DH had to remove the seats and we had to scrape the hardened oj concentrate from the carpet and the rail troughs in the floor.Then we used the bissel carpet cleaner. Not fun in August in Bmore- 90 degrees and 90 %humidity. stinky.
Yep- the oj can rolled under the seat behind some sports stuff. I always always check for rolling items now.

I'm so sorry for all of you that have had to deal with these issues. The worst I've ever found is a dessicated french fry or dust-covered Cheerio...thank heavens.

Cooper, almost the same, but at least it stayed in one spot to deal with. I will never understand how I did not find an onion that spoiled rotten under the seat. Used a bunch of Natures Miracle and it worked. I had to detail the car as it was, turning in at lease end.

I remember seeing an advertisement for an ozone treatment for cars to remove smells.

My friend was returning a gallon of spoiled milk to the grocery store. It tipped and the entire thing poured out in the back of the car. She took the car to the dealer where they removed the seats and then cleaned the carpet. I think it worked out okay.

Ugggh... so gross. What is it with car smells anyway? I guess since they're closed up so much. My DS vomited in my car when he was little and that car smelled for years, until the day we finally traded it in.

Since we're being gross, when I was a kid we had a dog who always vomited in the car. It got into the seat belt mechanisms and stayed there. Back in those days, we didn't actually use seatbelts...well, for anything besides storing old dog puke!

I am thankful that I caught it before the whole thing blew! That would have been 100 times worse.

My husband (who I don't deserve) spent the entire evening cleaning the car. While the smell made me gag, it didn't bother him that much because he spent his summers through high school and college working in a commercial dairy, and was somewhat used to the smell. He was able to remove the soaked seat belts and is soaking them in an enzyme solution, which he also sprayed on the affected areas.
We left all the windows open all night, and I wasn't able to detect the sour milk smell as I drove to work. However it is supposed to get into the mid seventies today, so the smell will probably come back.

When my daughter was young she had a very weak stomach and threw up frequently. Once, she was sitting in the front seat and threw up. It got all over the dash and in the vents. I don't think that smell ever entirely went away.

My car was a couple months old when we were getting ready to go to the cabin. I bought a couple bottles of red wine at Costco two days before our scheduled departure.

"Why take them out of my car, I thought? I will just be repacking them tomorrow..." The next day, I knew why I shouldn't leave them inside a hot car. The wine corks blew. Took me an entire day to get the red wine and smell out of my new car. It smelled like a rolling hangover.

Better wine than milk, I'm sure. Hoping for the best Terriks.

Horrible! I had a gallon of milk explode in my car years ago, and I had to have it professionally treated. Even so, on really hot days a sour milk smell lingered in the car.

I also know someone who accidentally left some raw chicken in a grocery bag in her car. Not pretty.

I'm gagging just hearing about it!!

Milk is the WORST, since it sours. Saturate it well with hot water and use a wet vac, maybe the one at a car wash. I would do it a couple of times.

How about an 18 month old with stomach problems during a 6 hour drive back from a ski vacation. Poor kid. He had a few blowouts ... oh the smell, horrid, but we couldn't open the windows much because it was freezing. Pulled over at one rest stop and just threw out the clothes he had been wearing! I ended up using a few trash bags to line and protect his car seat. It was a long 6 hours!!

I remember a friend who had a milk spill in her trunk, and she said it smelled like a dead body. I don't remember how she got the smell out.

Family is coming in today, and I am transporting wine to where they are staying. Since I have 2 hours that I am spending at the hairstylist and it's going to be quite hot today, I am bringing the box of wine bottles in the salon with me. They actually have a sign at the wine store to not leave wine in the car. I'm sure it happens quite regularly.

Ok, so far the milk has to be the most smelly, and the pork chops stuffed with maggots is the most gross. I had a potato roll under the seat one time, and did not know it. Eventually smelled awful. Couldn't find it, but little weinie dog found it and tried to eat it! That was a fight to get it away from him!