8 Common Smells in Your Home and How to Fix Them

8 Common Smells in Your Home and How to Fix Them: When you step into your home seeing a clean space is one thing but smelling a clean space is the real telltale sign of room or home that’s clean so when you walk in and you smell something funky or off that is an indication that something is just not right on the homestead now a lot of us are very used to the smells of our own homes so we ignore them we did a article about that a while ago that’s called your home’s scent signature and you stopped paying attention to it after a while but if you walk into your house with a fresh set of nostrils you might notice that there’s an odd smell so in this article we’re going to cover up seven of those common odd household smells those things that make your nose pucker and we’re going to tell you what they are and how to fix them.

Your closet now the other thing to keep in mind our shoes on the bottoms of your shoes you get a lot of dirt this brings in a percent of the dirt into our homes right here so you can only imagine the type of odors that are associated with all of this dirt that accumulates over time so not only does that tell us that we have to clean the floor of the cupboard relatively often because that’s where a lot of this dirt is building up but it also means that if you have any shoes that are particularly smelly so if you’re wearing shoes without socks or you have gym shoes you want to make sure you’re effectively deodorizing them we’ve done a video on baking soda sachets that you can drop in your shoes before we’ll link that for you down below and conveniently located right beside your front door is your front closet where all your shoes are living so you can always just open your door and let things air out a bit even though I’m standing in front of the fridge that is not what I’m here to talk about right now in fact it’s the cupboards and pantries where we keep our dry items specifically those things that continue to grow and perhaps even decompose in our cupboards for example if you keep things like squash potatoes onions and garlic in a cool dark cupboard yeah that’s the right thing to do but at the same time they’re still going to grow eyes and sprout green things and start to decompose and over time they can really smell we have a little area where we keep our stuff and honestly if I leave an onion in there for too long oh my gosh it is so offensive so air out the space and sprinkle some baking soda in the area or just leave a box or a bowl there overnight and that should help take care of the bad odor.

One secret you can’t keep in a bathroom are the smells that come out of that bathroom now of course there are the typical toilet smells we all know about those and we know what to do about those but there are some other more cunning smells odors that live in bathrooms that need to be dealt with but we might not necessarily know where those come from now there could be a couple of places and your first culprit and your most likely culprit is probably the drain whether it’s in the shower slash bathtub or in your sink the drain not only catches things like your hair and well anything else that comes out of your body it’s absolutely disgusting so if you do notice that there is an odor emanating from your bathroom that you just can’t seem to get rid of I highly recommend you get one of those drain cleaners it’s a long skinny thing you can pick it up from any hardware store you can also get an enzyme based drain cleaner which is effectively a product that you’ve dumped down your drain I have to say I think the extraction method is definitely more effective although it is way more disgusting in a small enclosed space like this if one thing smells everything starts to smell couple that with the fact that there’s very little airflow going on in here you have to be very careful about what you’re keeping in your closet because anything that’s in there is going to affect the smell of all your other clothing so if you want your clean clothes to smell good do not keep your dirty clothes or your dirty garments in the same space something else.

I noticed when I was cleaning at the beginning is I would walk into a bedroom and there would just be this kind of like stuffy gym sake type odor and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from until I started to put two and two together I would change the sheets and then walk into the room and that smell wouldn’t be there anymore what I learned over time is that soft surfaces so particularly your bedding in your bedroom the bedding basically stays right beside your body that sweats and sheds dead skin cells and your pet sleep on the bed all the gross things happen right here on the soft surfaces and then they just sit in your room reeking for periods of time so obviously the best way to tackle this is to launder your sheets and your bedding accordingly now anything that you keep close to your body you want to laundry on a fairly regular basis so your sheets you should be doing once a week once every two weeks max and then your other bedding like your comforters or even your pillows you should be laundering three four times a year depending on how you treat them if your pets are sleeping on your comforters you want to do it more frequently if you’re sleeping with wet hair on a pillow is a big no-no by the way you want to launder it more frequently as well and a great way to protect your more expensive items on your bed like your mattress and your pillows from odor and damage over time is to use appropriate protectors.

Storage area under our stairs in the basement everything goes in here no matter how many times we try to clean it out it just seems to get chock-full of scary terrifying things that we never use and never want to think about again anyway it is no excuse it should not look like that but the reason I’m pointing this area out is because there can often be odors in there particularly moldy and mildewy smells now you hear me talk about mold and mildew all the time but if you’re wondering what that actually smells like kind of smells like soil or like a forest it’s like if you dug a little hole you stuck your nose in there and you took a deep breath that’s really what mold and mildew smells like because what exists out there in nature is existing right in here if there’s a moisture issue so you have to stay on top of things do a little visual inspection if you notice that there are any leaks or any visual mold or mildew you must call an expert to deal with that it’s a serious issue it’s just a little bit or a little musty area that’s a little bit smelly you can clean it with a product like Kong chromium but again if it’s something big and serious you do want a professional to take care of it.

We separate out our compostable or live or wet garbage from our dry garbage or anything that can’t be composted that said both of those still smell now if your garbage is rather large like this one is and you’re putting lots of live or wet garbage in there it’ll build up you’re not going to change your garbage bag as frequently and your kitchen or your garage wherever it is that you keep your garbage will just start to smell now of course if it’s hot outside or though temperatures are warmer in your home that issue is just exacerbated you know a good habit would be to change your garbage every night before you go to bed so wherever you keep your wet or your live compostable garbage you want to change that out every night just to avoid anything from building up because really what’s happening there things are decomposing and decomposition stinks the other thing to keep in mind is you want to clean these garbage cans relatively frequently because garbage juice leaks in there and just hangs out and stinks up the place so we have some articles on that I’ll link them for you down below but basically you’re cleaning the vessel out with borax and hot water and a little bit of elbow grease.

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