How to clean a trash can

Hot water, dish soap, a long-handled brush, a cloth, and somewhere the water can drain. That is genuinely all — the specialist products sold for this do not do anything soap does not.

• Hot water and dish soap. Soap is a surfactant, which is precisely the right tool: it lifts fat and protein residue off a surface so it can be rinsed away. That residue is what the bacteria are eating.
• A long-handled brush, so you can reach the base of a tall can without putting your arm inside it.
• White vinegar, optional, for a second pass on a plastic can with scratches.
• Rubber gloves, and if the can has had maggots or meat in it, read the safety note on that page first.
• Somewhere to drain. A driveway, a garden, a shower if it is a small can. Not a kitchen sink, and not a lawn you care about if you are using much soap.

1. Step 01

   Empty it and take it outside

   Take the bag out, and take the can somewhere the water can go. If it has a removable inner bucket, lift that out and treat it as a separate item — this is the one real advantage of a bucket can, because the messy part comes to the tap rather than you taking the tap to it.

2. Step 02

   Rinse out the loose material first

   A quick hose or a bucket of water before you add soap. There is no point making a soap solution and immediately loading it with debris, and the first rinse also tells you where the stubborn deposits actually are.

3. Step 03

   Fill with hot soapy water and leave it

   A few inches of hot water and a good squirt of dish soap in the bottom, then leave it fifteen minutes. This is the step that does the work and it is the step people skip. Dried protein and fat need time to soften; scrubbing at them dry just polishes them.

4. Step 04

   Scrub the three places that matter

   Not the walls — the walls are the easy part. Do the underside of the rim where the bag folds over, which traps liquid and is invisible from above. Do the pedal channel and the hollow base, by tilting the can and flushing soapy water through the mechanism. And do the bottom corners, where a leak pools and where a square-cornered can holds residue a round one does not.

5. Step 05

   Rinse thoroughly, then rinse again

   Soap residue left behind attracts dirt and can make a plastic can smell faintly soapy for weeks. Rinse until the water runs clear and there is no foam.

6. Step 06

   Dry it completely before the next bag goes in

   The most-skipped step, and damp is one of the four conditions bacteria need. Leave it upside down in the sun or in a draft until it is genuinely dry, including the base and the pedal channel. A can that goes back into service damp will smell again within days regardless of how well you washed it.

A plastic can that still smells

Plastic is slightly porous and scratches hold residue. After the soap wash, fill the base with a solution of white vinegar and water — roughly one part to four — and leave it a few hours, then rinse and dry in direct sunlight if you can. Vinegar is a mild acid and works on the alkaline residues soap leaves behind; sunlight is a genuine disinfectant. If a can has been scrubbed hard for years and is heavily scored, there is a point at which the residue is in the scratches to stay, and the honest answer is a new can.

A stainless can with water spots

Those are mineral deposits from drying water, and they etch if left. Wipe along the grain with a damp microfibre and a drop of soap, then dry immediately — the drying matters more than the washing. Skip proprietary stainless sprays, which build a film that attracts marks. More on stainless finishes.

An outdoor cart

Same method, bigger scale, and worth doing twice a year rather than never. Lay it on its side, hose it out, and use a long brush — the Rubbermaid BRUTE's molded venting channels, which exist to make bags easier to remove, also give residue somewhere to sit, so run the brush down them. Let it dry in the sun with the lid open. Outdoor cans.

Anything with maggots in it

Deal with the maggots first, then clean. The sequencing matters and the safety note comes before the method — that page is here.

The way to clean less often is to keep the can dry. A bag that does not leak is the whole game, and the two things that cause leaks are overfilling and a bag that has slid down inside the can so waste sits against bare plastic. Fix the second one and the first becomes much less likely: why bags slip and the five fixes.

Between cleans, the two things worth having: a pod in the lid headspace where odor collects, and a baking soda powder for an outdoor can too big for a pod to matter. Neither substitutes for the wash.

Best in-lid pod

simplehuman Odorsorb Pod

A plant-oil pod that clips under the lid and works for around 45 days — the right place to put odor control.

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Best for outdoor cans

Arm & Hammer Trash Can & Dumpster Deodorizer, 42.6 oz

Baking soda in a sprinkle-top jar, sized for the outdoor can where a lid pod would be pointless.

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