About Odors and How to Remove Them

03 Dec About Odors and How to Remove Them

What’s That Smell?

Your home is your refuge from the world and normally you love its cozy and familiar smells. But what if those smells are suddenly less cozy and nastier? Cold weather leads to more time spent indoors and fewer chance to air the house out naturally. Here’s a guide to what’s causing the smells and how to get your house fresh again.

Food Odors

Most food odors come from grease. When you cook, grease droplets land on the floor, cabinets, curtains, carpet, and other surfaces. If you don’t get them up, the grease turns rancid, locking those foul smells into your house.

• Scrub your oven and counters with a mix of vinegar and dish soap. Vinegar cuts the grease and is also a disinfectant.
• Wash curtains, floor rugs, and kitchen towels regularly.
• Leave a plate filled with vinegar on the counter to absorb the odors overnight.
• Make a homemade air freshener by boiling lemon and orange slices, spices, herbs and essential oils on your stovetop or in a crockpot.

Garbage Disposal

Skins, peelings and other matter can get lodged inside your disposal and start to decay. You’ll know something is wrong by the horrible smells wafting up from your disposal.

• Put a mix of ice cubes and Borax cleaner in your disposal, turn it on and grind the ice. Repeat. The smell should be much fresher.
• Fill the sink with warm water and baking soda, then pull the plug and turn on the disposal. This mix will clean the blades.
• Coffee grounds will neutralize odors in your disposal. This also works to kill odors in your garbage pail.

Sweaty Stuff

Sweaty clothes can cause your whole house to smell bad.

Sweat is actually odorless. The apocrine glands in the armpit release sweat, which is a mix of proteins and lipids (fats). Bacteria in the armpit then feed on the sweat, and this action is what creates the smell we associate with sweat.

Have you ever noticed that a shirt you sweated in seems to smell fine and then, as the day goes on, it starts to reek again? That’s because odors are still trapped in the fibers. You need to get the smell out for good.

• Add baking soda or white vinegar to the wash.
• If you can’t wash your workout clothes right away, soak them in a mix of water and baking soda or washing soda until wash day.
• For white clothing, try an oxygen-based bleach to get yellow stains and smells out.

Pet Odors

Dog smells. Dog urine has high amounts of ammonia in it, which accounts for its strong smell of, you guessed it, ammonia.

That’s why trying to use ammonia-based cleaners to get the stains out is a bad idea. Most dog odors will come out easily with the use of a natural, enzyme-based cleaner.

Cat smells. Cat urine is particularly pungent and, unfortunately, particularly hard to remove.

It contains high levels of the protein Felinine. This is a pheromone that cats leave as a calling card for other cats and for predators. To make matters worse, cat urine also has fatty acids, which allow the pheromone to stick to walls, trees, and grass outdoors.

But there is hope. Enzymatic cleaners use natural compounds to destroy the Felinine proteins, break down the fatty acids and wash away the waste in a liquid suspension.

Nature’s Miracle is a brand-name product that does this. Many pet companies now manufacture their own versions of this cleaner.

To get pet odors out of carpets and upholstery, follow these tips.

• Use vinegar or another natural cleaner to dissolve dog urine stains and smells.
• Use an enzymatic cleaner and deodorizer specifically made for cat urine on cat stains. This doesn’t need to be rinsed or washed away. Just leave it to dry.
• Professionally clean your carpets to freshen them all over and lift out the last remaining smells and stains.

Still Troubled by Smells?

If you’ve tried everything to get pet, cooking, grease, mildew and other smells out of your house, call CarpetKeepers. Our natural, nontoxic PureScience method is the only method guaranteed to lift stains and odors, even old, set-in ones, from your carpets, area rugs and upholstery. Call us today and get a fresh new home for the holidays.