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Home & Kitchen · Reader story

Updated 3 November 2026

Christmas cheese, a packed fridge and my mother-in-law's face

Anne, 57, hosts eleven people every Christmas. How she kept her Stilton without the whole fridge smelling of it.

By Anne, 57 · Reader story

Last Christmas Eve my mother-in-law opened our fridge for the cream, stepped back and said: “Good God, Anne. What died?”

It was the cheese. It's always the cheese.

I'm Anne, 57, from Shrewsbury, and Christmas is at ours. It has been for twenty-two years. Eleven people, three days. That means a turkey crown, a ham, smoked salmon, two trifles, and the cheeseboard I wait all year for: a whole Stilton, a ripe Camembert, and the Stinking Bishop my brother brings every year as a joke.

That cheeseboard is the one bit of Christmas that's mine. Everyone else has their pigs in blankets and their crackers. I have Boxing Day night, when the washing-up's done, with a glass of port, a few oatcakes and a wedge of Stilton, and nobody asking me where the batteries are.

I've done it the same way for twenty-two years. The list goes on the fridge door on the first of December. The turkey crown is ordered from the butcher in Frankwell by the 10th. The cheese is the last thing I buy, on the last Saturday, so it's at its best on the day.

But by Christmas Eve the fridge is packed to the door, and every time someone opens it, the kitchen smells of feet.

Last year I did the big shop on Saturday 20 December. £212 at the till, and £41.60 of that was cheese. The Stilton on its own was £24. I got it home, unwrapped it to have a look, then wrapped it again in three layers of cling film and a freezer bag with a knot in the top, and pushed it right to the back.

By the Monday the milk tasted of it. By the Tuesday, the butter. I had two pots of bicarb in there, one on the top shelf and one in the door, both bought that week. Still smelled.

So I moved things round. Milk to the top, cheese to the bottom, butter in the door. I put the Stilton in a plastic tub with a lid, inside the freezer bag, inside the cling film. Geoff called it the Russian doll. It made no difference. Every time the door opened, the whole kitchen knew what was in there.

On the 23rd my neighbour Pat popped in with a tin of mince pies. I went to get her some cream, opened the door, and she took a little step back without meaning to. She didn't say a word. She just remembered she couldn't stop.

Then Christmas Eve. Six o'clock, the kids and grandkids arriving, coats piled on the banister, my husband Geoff doing the drinks. His mum, Margaret, is 84. She has never once let me make the gravy on my own. She went to the fridge for some cream for her coffee.

She opened the door, stepped back and said it. Loud. “Good God, Anne. What died?”

The whole kitchen went quiet. My son-in-law laughed, then stopped when he saw my face. My granddaughter, who's seven, held her nose and shouted “Pooh!” because she thought it was a game. Then all the little ones were doing it.

And I stood there holding the cream, in my good blouse, in my own kitchen, with eleven people looking at me.

Someone opened the back door, in December, with the ham resting on the side. Geoff said “Right! Who wants a sherry?” in the loud voice he uses when he's covering for something. I put the cream down and went upstairs and sat on the end of our bed for five minutes, because I didn't trust my face.

Margaret didn't mean anything by it. She never does. But on Boxing Day morning, when she thought I was still upstairs, I heard her say to Geoff: “You can't have butter on your toast in this house. It tastes of cheese.”

That afternoon Geoff moved the cheese into a cool box in the garage “until further notice”. Everyone cheered.

That night, after they'd all gone up to bed, I put my coat on over my dressing gown and went out to the garage with a torch. I opened the cool box, cut myself a bit of Stilton and ate it standing up next to the lawnmower.

That was my cheeseboard. Twenty-two years of Christmases, and I was eating it in the garage, in the dark, so nobody would pull a face.

It isn't your fault, and it isn't your food

Most fridge advice assumes the fridge is yours. Clean it more. Check the dates. Wrap things properly.

But plenty of fridges belong to more than one person. They belong to four flatmates, nine students or thirty-four colleagues. Or they are yours, but the smell comes from somewhere you can't change: a power cut while you were away, the Christmas Stilton, a nose at 11 weeks that picks up everything.

In every one of those fridges, you can do everything right and still open the door to a smell that isn't yours.

Nobody can control what other people put in a shared fridge. Nobody can stop a trip switch going while they're on a beach.

What can change is what happens to the smell once it's in there.

What it costs to leave it

In January I sat down with the receipts, the way I always do with the Christmas budget.

The Camembert went in the bin on the 27th, half eaten, because nobody would go out to the garage for it. £6.50. Two blocks of butter, £4.30, binned because they tasted of Stilton. Four pints of milk the same, £2.60. A tub of double cream Margaret wouldn't touch after that, £1.60. The Stinking Bishop sat in the cool box until New Year's Day, and my brother noticed.

That's £15 of food that was in date and still went in the bin, because it tasted of something else. Plus £3.80 on bicarb that did nothing at all.

It isn't a fortune. And it happens all year round. Every time I buy a nice bit of cheese, the same thing happens on a smaller scale. Geoff worked it out at roughly £9 a month in milk and butter we pour away or bin for tasting funny. That's £108 a year, before Christmas has even started.

Then there's the cheese itself. £41.60 of it last year, and the best of it spent Christmas in a cool box next to a lawnmower. I've been buying that Stilton since before my children were born. It's my one treat. By January I was wondering whether to stop buying it at all.

Geoff said I was being silly, that his mum would have forgotten about it by spring. She hadn't. At her birthday in April she told the whole table about “the year Anne's fridge cleared the kitchen”. Everyone laughed. I laughed too.

The money wasn't what kept me awake, though. In February, over Sunday lunch, Margaret said very kindly that maybe next Christmas could be at hers, “so you can have a rest, love”.

Geoff said what a lovely idea. I said nothing. I cleared the plates and stood at the sink for a long time with the tap running.

I didn't want a rest. I wanted my cheese, my fridge and my family round my own table.

Every week I left it was a week closer to the last Saturday before Christmas. I could feel it coming like an exam.

And I knew exactly what would happen if I did nothing. Same shop on the last Saturday. Same packed fridge. Same face at the door on Christmas Eve. Only this time she'd have a reason to take Christmas off me, and everyone would say it was for my own good.

A smell in the fridge never stays where it started. It drifts into the air, and everything else in there is sitting in that air.

The butter picks it up first. Then the milk. Then the cheese, the fruit and the leftovers in their tubs. Food that's well in date starts to taste of somebody else's dinner, and it goes in the bin anyway.

So you pay twice. Once for the food. Then again for the bicarb, the lemons, the scented fresheners and the sprays that cover it for a few days and give up.

Then people start living around it. They hold their breath to get the milk. They keep food in a carrier bag in their room, or buy a meal deal rather than open the fridge. They stop asking people round. Some start pricing a new fridge, around £600, and the next strong cheese or forgotten curry arrives in that one too.

None of this sorts itself out. Every week it's left is another week of binned food, another tub of bicarb, and another moment at the door hoping nobody else opens it first.

The people using a fridge don't always change. The air inside it can.

What doesn't work when it isn't your mess

It works without anybody's help

Noova is a little steel cylinder that fits in your palm and sits on any shelf.

Inside is a catalytic core. It breaks smells down instead of soaking them up, so there's nothing to fill up and nothing to replace.

Think of bicarb as a sponge: it holds on to the smell until it's full. Noova breaks the smell down, and the core isn't used up doing it. That's why one keeps going for 5 years.

Nobody has to change a thing, remember a thing or even know it's there.

No plug, no batteries, no refills, no button. It works anywhere in the fridge, at the back, in the door or in the salad drawer, and one covers a fridge up to 500 litres.

1. 1
   Put it on any shelf.
2. 2
   It starts working on its own.
3. 3
   Open your fridge. Smell nothing.

No scent. Nothing added.

Most fridge fresheners work by adding a smell. Lemon, “fresh linen”, “ocean”. The idea is that you smell that instead.

In a closed fridge, that second smell has nowhere to go. It ends up in the butter and the milk, on top of the first one.

Noova doesn't smell of anything. No fragrance, no chemicals. It's food-grade SUS 304 stainless steel, and it never touches your food.

It takes smells away instead of covering them with another one. So nobody opens the door to a new smell either: not the flatmate, not the client, not the person in the house who can smell everything right now.

The milk tastes of milk. The butter tastes of butter.

---

So this year I started early. In September I read that you should keep cheese in wax paper, not cling film. I bought the wax paper. The fridge still smelled whenever the Stilton was in.

I bought a scented fridge freshener, a little gel pot called “citrus breeze”. For a week the fridge smelled of oranges and Stilton at the same time, which I didn't know was possible. The cream tasted of it. The pot went in the bin, and so did the cream.

Geoff's answer was a bigger fridge. We went and looked one Saturday. A decent one was about £600. The young man in the shop said, quite cheerfully, that more room just means more cheese. We came home without it.

It was my sister-in-law, Sue, who put me onto Noova. She's married to the brother with the Stinking Bishop, so she gets the same problem every year from the other end. She'd been using one since the spring and had never said a word.

She showed me hers at the start of October. It's a little steel cylinder that fits in your palm and sits on a fridge shelf. That's all you ever see it do. No plug. No batteries. No button, no light, nothing to refill.

I asked her how a bit of steel was meant to take on a Stilton. She put it in words I could follow.

“Bicarb's a sponge,” she said. “It soaks the smell up and holds on to it. Then one day it's full, and nobody can tell when. This has a catalytic core inside. It breaks the smell down instead of holding it, so there's nothing to fill up. And the core isn't used up doing it. That's why it lasts 5 years.”

Then she said the bit that sold me. “And it doesn't smell of anything itself.” No fragrance, no chemicals, and it never touches the food. After the oranges, I didn't want another smell in my fridge. I wanted no smell.

I still had my doubts. Geoff picked it up, turned it over and said: “It's a salt cellar, Anne.” £29.99 for something that looked like it belonged next to the pepper. I nearly didn't bother.

I've also read enough adverts in my time to be wary. Things that promise to get rid of smells usually just smell of something stronger. I asked Sue straight out if hers smelled of anything. She held it under my nose. Nothing. It smelled of a teaspoon.

What tipped it was the 45 days. If it did nothing, I could change my mind. So I ordered the 2-pack, one for the kitchen and one for the garage fridge, which is full of beer and fizz from the first of December. Free delivery, and it worked out at £27.50 each.

I tried it on the first Stilton of the season. Saturday 17 October: Stilton on the second shelf, wrapped once in the wax paper. Noova on the middle shelf, behind the yoghurts.

On the Tuesday I opened the fridge and all I could smell was cold. I actually leaned in to check. Geoff came in for the milk and asked where the cheese had gone. It was right there at eye level, where it had been for three days.

That Friday I made toast on purpose and had it with butter. It tasted of butter. I know that sounds like nothing. I nearly cried over a slice of toast.

Geoff ate three slices and said nothing about cheese. When I rang Sue, she just said, “Told you.”

The week after, I put a Camembert in as well, a ripe one, to be sure. Pat came round for coffee on the Thursday, and I made a point of getting the cream out in front of her. She didn't step back. She asked if I had any biscuits.

I've even stopped buying bicarb. Two pots a month, near enough, for as long as I can remember. That habit came from my mother, and I didn't think I'd ever break it. Geoff, who called it a salt cellar, now tells people about it at the golf club.

It won't make a Stinking Bishop smell of roses when you unwrap it. When the lid comes off that one, the whole kitchen will know. But the fridge stops smelling of it, and so does everything else in there.

Margaret is coming on Christmas Eve, same as always. Christmas is at ours. I've already decided the cream goes on the top shelf, at the front, where she'll see it the second she opens the door.

The list is already on the fridge door. The butcher in Frankwell has the order. The Stilton gets bought on Saturday 19 December, same as always, and it goes in the kitchen fridge, wrapped once, on the second shelf.

And on Boxing Day night, when the washing-up's done, I'll have my port and my oatcakes and my wedge of Stilton at the kitchen table. Indoors. With the light on.

The cool box is back in the loft.

“I can’t believe it neutralised our French cheese pong!”
Anonymous, verified buyer

Bicarb, fresheners or Noova?

The usual fixes, side by side.

	Bicarb / charcoal	Scented fresheners	Noova
Breaks smells down (doesn't just soak them up)	✗	✗	✓
Adds a fragrance to your food	none	yes	none
Needs replacing	every few weeks	every few weeks	nothing to replace for 5 years
Plug or batteries	no	some do	no
Chemical-free, food-grade steel	—	✗	✓

Rated 4.81/5 from 232 reviews

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