Do you concern yourself over having a fresh smelling home?
Freshness, is perfectly achievable. It just requires a little thought. Once you start following the right strategies, the smells that plagued your interiors will vanish. And you’ll wind up with rooms that smell delightful.
In this post, we take a look at some of the dos and don’ts for creating freshness in your home. Try some of these ideas over the holiday period.
Do Add Fresh Pine Smells To Your Home
One of my favorite smells especially during the winter holidays is the fresh scent of pine trees. This one of the advantages of purchasing a fresh Christmas tree for your home. A lot of modern Christmas tree cultivars are disappointing. Growers are now breeding “non-fall” varieties that don’t drop their needles over time.
From a chores perspective, this innovation is most welcome. But from the point of view of odors, it’s not. Modern Christmas trees just don’t have that same magical pine smell they produced years ago.
Fortunately, you have a couple of options here. You can now buy pine-scented diffusers that will recreate the original smell, without the needles. Or you can just go out and get an older cultivar that produces that wonderful smell as the needles dry and drop off the tree.
Don’t Let Grease Build Up In The Kitchen
Grease buildup is a big problem in the kitchen. When you cook, tiny particles of vaporized fat eject into the air and then gradually condense on all your surfaces over time. But as the oil turns rancid, the smells can change. Eventually, the odor is awful.
You can check if you have a grease problem in your kitchen by running your fingers over the tops of your kitchen cabinets. If you find a load of slime sticking to your fingers, it’s time for a clean.
Do Use Air Purifiers
Air purification technology progressed tremendously in the last twenty years. Old air filtration methods involved trying to capture particles in fine, fibrous meshes. New techniques, however, break odor-causing particles into harmless byproducts, eliminating them completely.
Molekule is a leading company in the sector that makes air purification units. About fifteen years ago, it began work on developing a new kind of filtration system that would break apart smelly molecules into odorless byproducts. The technology eventually found its way into consumer products, providing a new kind of filtration experience.
As you learn more about the history of Molekule, you discover that the idea has been in development for a long time. From today’s perspective, it seems obvious that filters should attempt to chop molecules into their harmless constituents. But in the past, it was not. The task was always to capture particles, not destroy them. And that held the industry back for a long time. Now though, there are real solutions.
Don’t Accept Any Form Of Damp
If you want your home to smell fresh, damp walls are a big no-no. The moment your walls get wet, it provides an opportunity for mold and other types of fungus to get a foothold, causing bad smells to permeate throughout your home.
The best defense against this is to remove any source of dampness in the first place. Check your guttering to ensure that it is filtering water from your roof correctly. And be sure that water isn’t getting in through any other holes or cracks. Make sure that you remember to close all your windows too as rain can sometimes enter and lead to additional dampness.
Do Change Your Bedding Often
We tend to forget that bedding is virtually the same as clothing. Just like the apparel we wear, it is made of a thin material that hugs close to our bodies.
Nobody would think of wearing the same blouse for two weeks running. But it seems perfectly acceptable to wash bedding once a fortnight or less. Why?
The problem is this: if you don’t wash your bedding, it’ll collect all the odor molecules that come off your body. Then, over time, it’ll start outgassing them, making your home smell dreadful, even if you just cleaned the place from top to bottom.
Try to rotate your bedding every few days. Don’t Forget To Use Ironing Spray
There’s nothing better than the smell of fresh laundry. But because we live such busy lives, many of us leave it creased up in the machine for several hours (or days) before we finally get around to ironing it. And by that time, it doesn’t smell as good.
Fortunately, there’s a solution: ironing spray. If you haven’t encountered it before, it’s a revelation. You just spray it on your clothes and then apply the heat of the iron to create the freshening effect. Smelly, stale clothes suddenly gain a new lease of life, without having to go back in the wash for a second time.
Do Use Fabric Freshener
The number of fabrics littering your home is quite considerable. Drapes, sofas, and stools all feature materials like cotton, polyester, and wool.
Fabrics are great additions to homes because they’re soft and beautiful to look at. But just like bedding and clothes, they have a natural tendency to accumulate odor particles over time. And eventually, that can start creating nasty smells in your abode.
Fabric fresheners, though, offer a solution. Just like Molecule’s air purifiers, these products rely on advanced chemical technologies.
The concept is quite simple: create a spray compound that reacts with odor-producing particles and converts them into new chemicals, like water. It’s much more convenient than trying to wash the upholstery.
Don’t Allow Shoes In The Hose
Allowing shoes in the house might seem harmless enough, but it can lead to bad smells, especially if you have carpets. People bring particles into the home on the soles of their shoes. And over time, they become ingrained in the flooring and begin to smell.
Do Empty Your Trash As Often As You Can
If you notice a sudden and dreadful smell in your kitchen, the trash can is the most likely culprit. Sometimes, the food you throw away can go bad rapidly – often in the course of a single night.
Thus, if you want to keep smells at bay, empty your bin every couple of days at the least. This way, you avoid allowing bacteria to multiply to the point where you notice them.
Don’t Forget To Whip Up Some Fresh Coffee
If your home is a little smelly and you don’t have much time to correct the source of the problem because guests are due in a few minutes, then you can try masking it. Your best bet here is freshly-ground coffee. It smells wonderful, and it is so pungent, it can cover up bad smells until you have an opportunity to deal with them properly.
Do Use Bleach In The Bathroom
Have you ever wondered why people use bleach in the bathroom? It’s not because it is a soap or a cleaning agent. It’s because it is able to kill virtually all bacteria and completely sanitize an area.
Bleaches contain a chemical called sodium hypochlorite. Like alcohol, it destroys the fatty membrane around microorganisms, causing their innards to spill out. But the interesting thing about bleach is how little of the stuff you actually need to create the desired effect. Most bacteria will die in a 2 percent bleach solution, whereas they can survive in alcohol concentrations up to 70 percent.
Don’t Forget To Deep Clean
Now and again, you’ll need to perform a “deep clean” on your property.
- Cleaning out your oven
- Vacuuming areas usually covered by furniture or sofas
- Cleaning fabrics and upholstery, such as drapes, rugs, and cushion covers
- Removing dust build-up in wardrobes
Deep cleans are a great way to ensure that bad smells can’t build up. The best approach is to perform them on a rolling schedule. One week you do the carpets, the next the oven and so on.
Do Open Your Windows
Because people live in houses, rooms will naturally begin to smell after a while. But the problem is much more severe in homes with less ventilation. Odor particles tend to hang around longer. Opening your windows, therefore, is a great strategy for creating instant freshness.
Smells are particularly offensive in humid homes. People who do a lot of cooking typically find that they can’t shift certain smells from their properties. Humid air fosters the growth of bacteria which then thrives on any food that it can find in the dwelling.
Opening the windows is a great way to beat humidity and prevent bacteria from getting a foothold. It helps to reduce the chance of bacteria building up and cuts the risk of mold at the same time.
Opening windows also allow sunlight to flood in which is a natural disinfectant. Any bacteria in the air are slowly destroyed by UV radiation over time.
