How to Get Rid of Odors in Your Home

Items such as garlic can fill your home with an unpleasant odor.

Daily living will turn your once fresh-smelling home into a stinky mess. Cooking, smoking, pets, children and adults alike will fill your home with difficult-to-remove odors. These odors will linger in the air for days and will even attach themselves to carpets, upholstery, draperies and walls. Many commercial odor removers simply mask the odors with a floral scent. Fortunately, various natural remedies are available that will eliminate the odors instead of simply covering them up.

Things You'll Need

• Baking soda
• Pot
• Orange or lemon peels
• White vinegar
• Spray bottle
• Vacuum
• Toilet scrubber
• Lemon wedges

Instructions

1. Place an open box of baking soda in your refrigerator to absorb odors in your fridge. Replace the box of baking soda with a new opened box every 30 days.

2. Bring water to a boil on your stove. Dump the boiling water carefully down a smelly garbage disposal and toss several orange or lemon peels in the disposal. Run the garbage disposal for several minutes to grind up the peels. The boiling water will clean the blades and the citrus peel will deodorize the disposal.

3. Mist upholstery and draperies with white vinegar. As the all-natural vinegar dries, it will deodorize the upholstery. Repeat the process as needed.

4. Remove carpet odors by sprinkling baking soda over the fibers and let sit for several hours. Remove the baking soda with your vacuum. Repeat the process and leave the soda on the carpet for 24 hours to remove tough carpet odors.

5. Pour 1 cup of white vinegar into a stinky toilet bowl and let sit for five to 10 minutes before scrubbing the bowl clean with a scrub brush. White vinegar will cleanse and deodorize the toilet bowl. Flush the bowl clean.

6. Boil lemon wedges on your stove to remove odors in the air. Fill a pot with water and place several lemons cut into wedges in the water. Bring the water to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Let the water simmer dry.

Tips & Warnings

• Open doors and windows on a warm, sunny day to help air out your home.

References

• Reader's Digest: How to Kill Kitchen Smells
• "Good Housekeeping"; Ask Heloise: What's That Smell?; Heloise
• Woman's Day; Eliminate Kitchen Odors; Arianne Cohen; August 2010