How do I get the coffee smell out of plastic tubs?

Question

I bought some plastic tubs at The Container Store to store coffee grounds in. It has been about 6 months and I just recently bought some new coffee tubs. I decided to put flour + sugar in the old tubs. Thing is, after about a week of being in the tubs the flour + sugar smell reek of bitter coffee! Yes, I washed the tubs before putting the flour + sugar in them - 3 times, actually (I couldn't smell any coffee...so I assumed they were clean). I had to dump all the flour + sugar after I discovered they smelled so badly...what a waste! Anyway, I've washed the tubs once more and I can't smell any thing coffee-esque but then again I couldn't smell coffee before either (and my sense of smell is just fine).

How can I make sure the smell is out of the tubs so that it doesn't make anything else smell like coffee??

Answer 1

Lemon juice and baking soda .



If everything else fails, use some charcoal.

Answer 2

well you could try soaking them in bleach water and then wash and rinse to see if that will help. or another thing that might work is soaking them in vinegar and water since vinegar acts like a neutralizer but you may get the smell of the vinegar. i use vinegar when one of my pets have an accident or if something gets spilled that has a nasty odor and it seems to work very well but i do smell the vinegar for a day or two afterwards. so you may want to wait a day or two after trying these



i hope this helps

Answer 3

wash with bleach water, that even takes the smell of shrimp out so im sure it would work for coffee

Answer 4

stuff with newspaper