12 Top Tips to Keep Your Home Smelling Clean

Your home’s scent makes an impression the moment you walk through the door. If it smells stale or musty, no amount of cleaning will erase that grungy feeling. This is especially important this time of year with holiday guests coming. These 12 easy tricks will banish bad smells and keep your home smelling fresh and clean!

1: Make your Home Welcoming with this Homemade Scented Pumpkin Candle

These easy-to-make candles will fill your home with the warm scent of cinnamon, and they also add a beautiful, personalized touch to your mantel, side table or holiday centerpiece. Watch our video above for step-by-step instructions!

2: Fast DIY Air Freshener

For a quick, easy and effective way to freshen up your home, put a fan in a central location, turn it on the low or medium setting, and place a couple of your favorite scented dryer sheets on the back of the fan’s grate. The air will spread the fresh scent around your home in a jiffy!

3: Eliminate Mold and Mildew Odor with Wet & Forget Indoor

One of the worst things about indoor mold and mildew is its musty odor. Even if you can’t see the mold and mildew itself, the musty smell gives it away and leaves your home smelling less than clean.

Wet & Forget Indoor Mold + Mildew Disinfectant Cleaner not only kills mold and mildew and cleans up the mess; it also kills the odor-causing bacteria responsible for mold’s musty stench. When you use Wet & Forget Indoor, you’re eliminating the odor instead of just covering it up. And Wet & Forget Indoor leaves behind a fresh, clean scent, instead of the acrid chemical stink that bleach and many other cleaners leave in their wake. Wet & Forget Indoor even eliminates mold and mildew in one notoriously smelly place: your trash can.

Here’s a simple way to freshen your bathroom when it needs it the most: Put a few drops of your favorite essential oil inside each new toilet paper roll as you change it. Each time someone pulls on the roll, the fresh scent is released. The fresh, clean scent of eucalyptus oil is an excellent choice for the bathroom.

5: Chemical-Free Scented Air Filter

Here’s an easy way to freshen up your home without chemically-scented air fresheners: When you change your furnace’s filter, add a few drops of your favorite essential oil to the new filter. Make sure you allow the essential oil to dry completely before you install the new filter. Here are some recommendations for refreshing scent combinations.

6: Freshen up with Homemade Carpet Powder

One of the biggest smell issues in many homes is the carpet. Carpet can hold onto pet odors, smoke odors, and pretty much any other odor that it comes in contact with. This inexpensive, homemade carpet powder is baking soda based to help your carpet release odors and smell fresh again. It’s even kid and pet friendly!

7: DIY Crockpot Freshener

This freshener takes the baking soda concept and puts it to work in your smelly crockpot, just in time for all that holiday cooking. Now your crockpot will be fresh and clean again!

8: Deodorize your Kitchen Sponge in the Microwave

Kitchen sponges can get really smelly, really fast. That horrible odor isn’t just unpleasant, though—it means that your sponge is infested with millions of potentially harmful bacteria. Use your microwave to kill the bacteria and wipe out the smell! Here are instructions.

Coffee and vanilla are two of the most soothing scents around. Fill your home with these wonderful aromas the easy way by filling small bowls with coffee beans, placing vanilla tea lights in the middle, and lighting them. The warmth from the tea light candles releases the delicious coffee fragrance, and the two scents mingle to form a tantalizing vanilla latte aroma that will make your home feel warm and relaxed.

10: Bargain Homemade Pillow Spray

A fresh-smelling home includes a fresh-smelling bed. Pillow and bedding sprays make your bed smell wonderful and help you relax and unwind after a long day. Pillow sprays can be quite expensive, though, and are usually made with artificial scents. You can make your own inexpensive, natural pillow spray at home by mixing 2 cups of distilled water, 5 drops of organic liquid soap, and 30 drops of your favorite essential oil. Mist the spray onto your pillow a little while before you go to bed, and sweet dreams will follow!

11: DIY Gel Air Fresheners

These natural gel air fresheners allow you to choose your own scents, avoid chemical fragrances, and add your own personal touches to make your air freshener fit your décor. You can even combine these gel air fresheners with some of our creative mason jar craft ideas.

12: Freshen your Shower with Eucalyptus

There are products out there that use your shower’s steam to fill it with the scent of eucalyptus, but they’re short-lived and pricey. This clever idea uses a bough of preserved eucalyptus to decorate your shower head and fill your shower with the soul-soothing scent of eucalyptus again and again, all for about $15.