Advertisement

🎄 Order by Monday 7 December for Christmas delivery · 45 days to change your mind

Home & Kitchen · Reader story

Updated 3 November 2026

Nine people. One fridge. Nobody owns the chicken.

Josh, 19, kept his food on his windowsill for a month. Here's what made the halls fridge bearable again.

By Josh, 19 · Reader story

Nine of us share one fridge in halls. Someone's chicken had been in there since freshers' week. Nobody would say it was theirs.

I'm Josh, 19, first year, doing geography in Sheffield. Our flat is nine bedrooms off one corridor, one kitchen at the end, one fridge and zero labels.

On move-in day, Mum and I did a big shop together. She bought me proper food. Mince, chicken thighs, cheese, eggs, yoghurts, the lot. £62. She even wrote JOSH on everything in marker pen. I was a bit embarrassed at the time. Looking back, it's the only labelled food that fridge has ever seen.

Mum cried in the car park. I pretended I didn't see. She'd driven three hours with my duvet, a box of pans and a laundry basket full of tins.

I'm not a fussy person. I grew up with two brothers and a dog. Our fridge at home was never a museum. But this was something else.

Freshers' week was mid-September. By the first weekend someone had already left a takeaway in there with the lid half off.

By week three the fridge had a smell you could taste. You'd open it and it was in your mouth before you'd even reached for anything.

Nobody knew whose food was whose. Two people had bought the same milk. There were four open tubs of butter, all with toast crumbs in. The vegetable drawer had a cucumber in it that had collapsed into a sort of green bag of water.

By week six I was keeping my food in a carrier bag on my windowsill. Sheffield in October, so it's cold-ish, but it's still a windowsill. My milk lived next to my deodorant.

I wasn't the only one. Ellie kept hers in a cool bag under her desk. A lad called Marcus just stopped buying anything that needed a fridge. He lived on crisps, noodles and cereal with water. I'm not joking about the water.

The chicken was still there. Bottom shelf, left-hand side. It had gone a colour I don't have a word for, and the packet had puffed up. Nobody would touch it, because touching it made it yours.

We worked out it had to belong to someone who'd moved out after a week, because nobody else would leave a whole pack. That somehow made it harder. It wasn't anyone's. It was just ours now.

We had a flat meeting about it. Our flat rep, Ellie, put a note on the door: “WHOEVER OWNS THE CHICKEN PLEASE BIN IT.” Someone added a smiley face. The note stayed up. So did the chicken.

Then one Wednesday, Mum FaceTimed. She always rings on a Wednesday around six, when she knows I'll be cooking. Or when she thinks I'll be cooking.

I was in the kitchen. I flipped the camera round to show her my pasta, because I was actually quite proud of the pasta. Someone had left the fridge door open behind me. She saw the fridge before I could turn it round.

“Josh. What is THAT?”

I tried to say it wasn't mine. But she'd already spotted the carrier bag on my windowsill in our last call, and she put it together. She went very quiet. Then she said, “Is that why you've got food on your windowsill?”

Nineteen years old, eating cold beans off a windowsill, and my mum had just seen why.

She didn't shout. She just said “Oh, love,” in that voice. That was harder than shouting. Then she asked, quietly, if I was eating at all. I said yes. Meal deals count. I said I had to go because my pasta was boiling over. It wasn't.

After I hung up I sat on my bed and ate a cold tin of beans with a spoon, because that was the plan for tea anyway. I could hear someone in the kitchen open the fridge, then someone say “oh my GOD”, then the door slam.

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

After that call I worked out what the fridge was costing me, mostly so I could tell Mum I had it under control.

My food budget is £45 a week. I'd binned the yoghurts and the cheese from that first shop, because by the time I moved them to the windowsill they tasted of the fridge. About £9. Since then I'd been buying a meal deal for lunch most days instead of making sandwiches, because a sandwich meant opening the fridge. £3.85 a time, five days a week. That's £19.25 a week. Nearly half my food money, on meal deals. Money I could have spent on proper food, or a night out, or the train home.

And then the stuff I bought and never used. A bag of spinach for a pasta thing I never made, because I couldn't face putting it in the fridge. Chicken I'd planned to cook on the Sunday, binned on the Monday, because a windowsill isn't a fridge. That's another £6 or £7 most weeks.

Over a term, that's more than £200. Over the year, if nothing changed, it was close to £580, and I'd still be eating beans off a windowsill.

I wasn't the only one losing out. Nine people, all doing their own version of the windowsill. If we each binned £10 a week because of that fridge, that's £90 a week between us. Over the year, more than £2,500, in one kitchen.

Mum worked hard to help me get here. She sends me £20 on a Friday when she can. I didn't want her money going on meal deals because of a fridge.

And I'd stopped cooking with the others. The kitchen's where you make friends in halls, and I was eating in my room with the door shut, next to my windowsill.

And there was nothing I could do about the chicken, or the eight other people. Mini fridges aren't allowed in our block. I asked. You get a warning letter.

I'm here until June. Next year it's a shared house with five of the same people, and the same fridge habits.

If I did nothing, that was the next two years. Hoodie over my nose every time I wanted milk. Mum's voice on Wednesdays. And probably Mum driving up with a cool box every few weeks, which she had actually offered to do.

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.

---

Bicarb lasted about a fortnight. Ellie bought a tub from the corner shop and put it on the middle shelf. For about ten days it was a bit better. Then the smell was back, and the tub just sat there, full, doing nothing.

Then someone put half a lemon in. That lasted a day, until the lemon went the same way as everything else.

Someone else sprayed air freshener into the fridge. Just sprayed it straight in, like a bin. After that everything in there tasted of “mountain air” and chicken.

Ellie's the one who found Noova. She's the sort of person who reads the whole page and the FAQ before she'll let anyone buy anything.

She showed it to us at a flat meeting on her laptop. Nine people round one table in the kitchen, with the fridge humming behind us. Marcus said, “Will it work on the chicken?” Ellie said, “No, Marcus. The chicken goes in the bin. This is for after.”

It's a little steel cylinder you put on a shelf. It fits in your hand. No plug, which is good, because there's one socket in our kitchen and it always has a toaster in it. No batteries. Nothing to refill. You put it in and leave it.

Ellie explained the how. Bicarb is like a sponge. It soaks smells up until it's full, and then it stops, which is exactly what we'd watched happen. Noova has a catalytic core inside that breaks the smell down instead of storing it. So it never fills up, and the core doesn't get used up either. That's why it lasts 5 years.

Marcus said that was basically magic. Ellie said it was basically chemistry. I said I didn't care what it was if I could have my milk back.

One covers the whole fridge, up to 500 litres. Ours is big, but nowhere near that. And it doesn't matter which shelf it goes on.

It doesn't smell of anything itself, either. No scent, no chemicals. After “mountain air”, nobody wanted another smell.

My doubt was money. £29.99 is most of a week's meal deals. But we split a two-pack, one for our kitchen and one for Ellie's boyfriend's flat, which made it £27.50 each with free delivery. And there were 45 days to change our minds if it did nothing.

I also wondered if someone would nick it. Things go missing in halls. Ellie said, “Nobody's going to steal a bit of steel out of that fridge. Nobody goes near that fridge.” Fair point.

In the end Ellie binned the chicken herself, with salad tongs and a bin bag, the day the Noova arrived. She held it out at arm's length all the way down the corridor, and everyone came out of their rooms to watch. Someone filmed it. She got a round of applause. Then she washed the tongs three times and announced that nobody was ever using them again.

We wiped the shelf. Then we put Noova on the middle shelf and left it. Ellie stuck a bit of masking tape on the shelf next to it: “DO NOT TOUCH. NOT FOOD. NOT YOURS.”

The chicken was gone, but the smell had got into everything: the shelves, the door, the drawer at the bottom. That's the bit Noova sorted.

By the weekend I could open the fridge without pulling my hoodie over my nose. I moved my food back in on the Sunday. All of it. Off the windowsill and onto the shelf, with my name on in marker pen, the way Mum did it.

Marcus bought milk. Actual milk, for his cereal. That's how I knew it had worked for everyone, not just me.

The note about the chicken came down too. Someone replaced it with a drawing of a chicken with a halo.

Nobody else labels anything, still. Someone's yoghurts are on day nine. But the fridge doesn't smell of them, and my milk doesn't taste of anyone's dinner.

I make sandwiches again. I've had about four meal deals in a fortnight, instead of ten. I reckon I'm about £10 a week better off. That's a night out, or the train home at the end of term.

On Friday nights now, half the flat cooks together. Marcus does a terrible stir fry. Ellie does the music. I do the garlic bread, which lives in the fridge, on my shelf, with my name on.

Mum FaceTimed on the Wednesday. This time I showed her the fridge on purpose. I opened the door, held the phone right up to the shelf and gave her the full tour.

She said, “Well. That's an improvement.” Then she asked if I was eating properly, which is how I knew she was back to normal.

Then she said, “Do you want me to send you one for next year's house?” I told her it was sorted. Ours is coming with us.

The carrier bag is back in the cupboard. The windowsill is just a windowsill.

“I am totally amazed at what this little gadget does”
Moira, verified review

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

Here are a few of them, copied exactly as they were written.