Unstink Your Life With No-Brainer, No-Spray DIY Air Fresheners

Let’s face it. Things get stinky.

My cat. He gets stinky. My kid, stinky. My hamper. Yep. Sometimes it’s stinky.

Inspired by all this stink, I began thinking seriously about no-spray air fresheners.  Serendipitously, my brother-in-law texted me a day later asking if I had any ideas for a car freshener.

So we’re going to talk about options for the house, and the car!

Now your life can be just a little less stinky. Or a little more fresh.  I guess it depends on whether or not your litterbox glass is half full.

The Essential Oil on Fabric Method: Enjoy this one for its ease and effectiveness. You’ll be amazed at how well it works. Simply use a small piece of fabric (I cut up an old pillowcase to use for my homemade dryer sheets, and had a few scraps leftover)  or a cotton ball and drip your favorite essential oil on it. Depending on how scented you want your room, use anywhere from two drops to soaking it all the way through. Place this small fabric or cotton ball against one of your household vents and let the air conditioner or heater run.  The scent I recommend? Ylang-ylang. It’s romantic, but somehow warm and comforting.

This is his scratchy perch thingy. Our carpet is not this gross. Mainly because we do not have carpet.

The Sea Salt Rindinator: I just named it that. You like? This tip, which I found at Tip Nut about a year ago, has fended off the litterbox funk many times. Slice a lemon (or orange, or lime) in half, scoop out the flesh and use it for cooking, tea, or a facial scrub – and fill the hollowed out half of the rind with sea salt. Tuck it anywhere that musty or icky smells loom – near the hamper, behind the toilet, by the litterbox, in the back of the fridge, you name it. In about two months, the salt goes away, and that’s how you know it’s time to buy more lemons.

Dry Herbs In Your Car – Twofer! This idea was just brought to my Twittertention the other day, and I fell in mad, crazy love. Basically, you pick out or cut some fresh herbs, put them on a newspaper in the backseat of your car, and let them dry for a few hours while your car is parked and the windows are up. Apparently, this is a very fast way to dry herbs, and the aroma hangs out in the car for a while. Be sure to choose herbs with scents that please you, since they’ll be hanging out. Nothing like a cantankerous dill odor to ruin the drive to work.  Read more about it here.

The Old-Timey Pomander Method: If you look over to your left, you’ll notice that this is not a finished pomander. I ran out of cloves before I got a quarter of the way through. It worked out well, because that also happened to be when my fingers started cramping and I started yelling at the cat for breathing. Nonetheless, the unfinished pomander smells like Springtime and Thanksgiving if they had an illegitimate season-child. Yum. I will finish it.

Instructions are: Shove as many whole cloves as you can fit onto one orange. Put it in your drawer or hang it somewhere that needs freshening. Mine is going in my closet. (I want my clothes to smell like illegitimate season-children.) The longer it sits, the better it gets.

Don’t Burn Incense in Your Car: You knew it was coming, didn’t you? You could tell by the first picture. Somewhere, somehow I was going to say the word “incense.” Well, here’s what I do with it. I don’t burn it. I put it in my car air vents. It’s especially nice in summer, when the car starts to smell a little musty and whatnot. When you crank on the air, you get a blast of crunchy goodness with it. My favorite incense? Anything that contains the word “amber” and not the words “nag champa.”

My Grandma’s Method: Nothing makes me think of my grandmother more than the smell of a freshly burnt match. She did not smoke. She used it … as an air freshener, in the bathroom, when things got a little untoward. I’ll be darned if it doesn’t work, too. And while it does work, I stuck this in more as a tribute to old-fashionedness than anything serious. Thank you, Grandma. Thank you Grandmas everywhere, with your pomanders and your lit matches and your crinkled up Kleenexes always ready for a good cry.

And that’s all I have for today, folks. Mainly because it’s midnight, the cool, rainy breeze is drifting in through my windows, and I’m exhausted. The perfect recipe for sleep.

Do you have any air/room/car freshening tips to share?

In fresh-as-a-summer-breeze crunch!

This is part of the Healthy Child Blog Carnival about Clean Water and Air Solutions – an effort by Healthy Child Healthy World to help inspire a movement to protect children from harmful chemicals.

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