Natural Ways to Get rid of Odours from Your Home
Smells are inevitable in homes. From the pleasant aromas of perfumes and candles to the unpleasant odours of smoke and food odours, smells are inevitable in all homes. Most quick fixes include using air fresheners and candles, but these only mask the smell and are often synthetic, which greatly reduces the quality of the air in your home. Many people are beginning to opt for more natural solutions, and most everyday cleaning can be done using items found in your cabinets.
- Remove the source of the odour
The best tool to use for this task is your trusted nose. Often an entire house can smell because of a kitchen sink, clogged gutters, or a spill on the carpet, so removing the source of the odour is the clear first step. However, at times you may not know how to do it yourself. For example, removing the debris and cleaning the gutters isn’t an easy task. You may need to climb on the roofs, and if this isn’t your cup of tea, you may contact a gutter cleaning service such as Gutter Cleaning Little Rock to do it for you.
- Multiple uses for baking soda
Many people leave a box of baking soda in their fridge to eliminate food smells. Remember to place the box of baking soda away from the vegetables, as the sodium bicarbonate can cause leafy green vegetables to wilt faster.
Carpets absorb the all smells in your home, which could be a likely cause for the lingering smell that you may have become nose-blind to. Another great use for baking soda is to sprinkle some all over your carpet and vacuuming it after about an hour.
Aside from being useful in school science classes, baking soda combined with vinegar can do wonders for your sink. If your sink begins to smell, toss in a generous amount of baking soda down your sink and follow that by pouring vinegar to create a chemical reaction. Leave it for about 15 minutes before draining it down with warm water.
- Improve ventilation
Replacing stale air with fresh air from outside is the fastest way to neutralise odours. Open all the windows for ten minutes a day to get a draft blowing through the house. This will flush out odours that have been sitting in your home for days, replacing them with clean outdoor air. This would be more helpful if you had a garden outside your home. You could plant all sorts of trees there, learn how to prune roses to keep them healthy and smelling beautiful, and let that smell waft in to eliminate odours.
However, if you live in a city, the outdoor air might not smell much better than it does inside. Your windows may also not open, or it might be dangerous to leave them open for too long. It can also be noisy and cold with the windows thrown wide, so you’ll need to find other ways of improving ventilation in your home.
You can start by improving air circulation in the crawl space under your floors. A company similar to this Pier and beam Houston based repair firm can install passive or mechanical ventilation systems to draw air in and out through filters, helping to replace stale air whilst also reducing mould and mildew growth – major causes of poor air quality.
- The universal cleaner: vinegar
For those that have a garburator, a quick fix usually consists of running through pieces of lemon or lime or a few ice cubes through the disposal. Freezing vinegar in ice cube trays and running those through the garbage disposal is a better alternative especially since vinegar has odour eliminating powers.
Use these odour eliminating powers to your advantage. Boiling vinegar is a great deodorizer for your entire house. Your kitchen may smell like vinegar at first, but this usually dissipates quickly. This is also a much safer alternative to synthetic air fresheners, which can greatly reduce the air quality in your home. You can also boil some vinegar separately next time you cook, so food smells, such as from fish, are less empowering throughout the house.
If the odour from the garbage disposal persists, then it may be an indication of clogged drains. In that case, you might want to consider taking professional help from a plumbing company like this one that can provide repair services. Once that is fixed, you can then go ahead and use the homemade solutions for a clean garburator.
- Coffee Grounds
Similar to vinegar, coffee grounds are a great deodorizer as well. If your garbage is beginning to smell but it is not full yet, throw in some coffee grounds which can help reduce smells, much like how teabags can be placed in shoes for deodorizing purposes.
Placing coffee grounds in a bowl and placing them in a room can absorb unpleasant smells. It also comes with an added bonus of getting a nice whiff of coffee when passing by.
- Activated charcoal
Activated charcoal is both a clean and pure method of eliminating odours naturally. It works continuously to remove odours at the molecular level. Activated charcoal can be found at local retailers such as the Home Depot. You can place it near litter boxes, under the sink, or even in bathrooms to eliminate odours, making it the ideal choice.
In rare circumstances, a house could smell like rotten eggs. This indicates a gas leak and should be left to the professionals for immediate action. While the tips above are great for everyday cleaning, other times may call for a more thorough cleaning. Scrubbing walls and repainting them in the room where the smell is the strongest may help eliminate the smell. Additionally, replacing carpets can help if they are heavily soiled. A less costly alternative can be achieved by scheduling a professional carpet cleaning appointment.
ChemDry has a line of revolutionary and Green-certified products to keep your carpets and upholstery looking and smelling clean. In an independent Home Health Study concluded that the ChemDry method removed 89% of airborne bacteria, which improves indoor air quality. While your carpet may look clean on the surface, only professional carpet cleaners can remove the soil and allergens that are trapped deep in the fibers. In the meantime, give these carpet cleaning tips a try.