How to Get Rid of Household Odors

Even the messiest house can look comfortable if it smells nice inside. If your home looks good yet smells bad, you need some tips on how to get rid of household odors. There are many sources of problem smells, so you may require more than one solution. Products filled with chemicals help mask unpleasant areas, but there are also natural ways that actually clean the air where you live. Read on to learn how to get rid of household odors.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Ban smoking from anywhere inside your house or garage. This rule should pertain to visitors and residents alike and no exceptions should be made because of inclement weather.

2. Obsess about keeping the bathrooms clean. This is an excellent arena for using diffusers with lavender or lemon oil. Bathrooms are also a perfect place for an exhaust fan (put one in the kitchen, too!) to help draw out unwanted odors.

3. Keep your trash clean, which means not leaving a can filled with food scraps in the hot outdoors for long periods of time. To help keep bacteria at bay, spray the top of the garbage with a solution that's normally used in diaper pails or litter boxes. It works by binding odor particles and naturally biodegrading the bacteria causing the odor. And wash out those cans every week with an all-purpose cleaner.

4. Try mom's old trick and place an opened box of soda in your refrigerator and one in your freezer to absorb food odors. In a pinch, you can soak a cotton ball in vanilla and place it on a plate in the frig until it dries.

5. Stay away from that commercial chemical pine cleaner as it can fire up old allergies. There are certain fragrant oils that not only mask odors, they actually clean the air. Try vanilla, lavender, lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, clove or cinnamon in various forms such as potpourri, simmering pots and diffusers for the air and sachets for the laundry room, closets, drawers and in between sofa cushions.

6. Go high tech and rid the air in your home of even the tiniest bacteria-causing particles with HEPA filters, ozone air cleaners or electrostatic filters. These alternatives have a wide price range and varying degrees of performance capability, one which should fit the needs of your household.

Tips & Warnings

• A lovely, romantic way to deal with common household odors is to purchase a Lampe Berger. These devices were invented by a French chemist and they rid the air of 68 percent of bacteria before dispersing fragrance.

Resources

• Do it Yourself and Kill Those Household Odors
• For a Variety of Lampe Bergers and Accessories

[Lizbomb]

on 10/10/2008 I am a property manager for a large apartment community. I have a decent turnover every month of tenants vacating and new tenants moving in. As you can imagine, I have to deal with the odor problem on a regular basis. Cigarette, pet, mold and mildew odors are the most common not to mention ethnic cooking. I was fortunate enough to have a new product recommended to me by one of my maintenance crew. The product is called “Room Shocker” it's a fairly new product on the market so it's hard to find but you can get it on a website called BiocideSystems.com. This product is so amazing I want tell the whole world, because I know how frustrating it is to keep trying different products that don't deliver. I can tell you, I’ve tried almost everything including enzyme neutralizing products and ozone machines. I can honestly say that nothing works as well as this product. So far I've used it t