- First and foremost, wash the offending clothes. If you go out for the evening and come home smelling like cigarettes, the items you're wearing should be put right in the wash, as soon as possible. Don't allow the smell to set into the clothes for more than a day. A delicate or hand-wash cycle on your machine will be able to wash your delicate items more thoroughly than washing by hand.
- A spray-on odor eliminator works well on clothing that reeks of cigarette smoke, and can be applied while you are still wearing the clothing. This is the perfect choice for those times when you are out to lunch with smokers and are forced to return to the office smelling like an ashtray. Perfumes and colognes will prove ineffective because they only cover the smell and mingle with the cigarette odor, creating a more noxious smell. The odor-eliminator products actually work to remove the odors, not just cover them up.
- An old but reliable trick for removing an odor from clothing is to hang the clothes out in the fresh air and sunshine. A sunny day with a nice breeze works perfectly for this situation, and will give the clothes that unmatched fresh-air smell. It might take a little longer to completely remove the cigarette smell from the clothes, but Mother Nature does an effective job.
- With smokers in the house, even the clothes hanging in the closet can eventually reek of smoke. Some have found it necessary to take their entire wardrobe to the dry cleaners once a month to eliminate the smell, whether the clothes have been worn or not. If you take this extreme measure, make sure that the bags the clothes return home in remain on the clothes until they are worn. This will protect them from the offending smoke.
- Try not to drive in a closed car with a smoker whenever possible, or at least open the window. Don't allow smoking in the house, where your clean clothes can become sullied with the smell.
