Strong odors cause significant damage to the market value of your home. Even if you’re not trying to sell it, persistent odors can be damaging to your dinner parties and even your health. Thankfully, if your home has any persistent pet, smoke, or mold odors, there are some things you can do to tackle it on your own. However, if home odor removal doesn’t work out, you need to call a professional.
Don’t Mask the Odor
One thing that you want to be careful of is masking odors in your house. Most so-called “home odor removal” tips don’t wholly remove odors. Air fresheners are the worst offenders because they don’t fight the cause of odor. They mask it with other, stronger scents. Breathing too many chemicals isn’t always healthy. Worse, when those masking odors fade away, the offensive odor could come back gradually. Because the smell is gradual, it gives your nose a chance to get used to it. Sadly, you may never notice the scents creeping back while others who visit your home do.
Breaking Down Scents in Fabrics
The one good thing about pet odors is that you often know exactly what’s causing it. When your new puppy has an accident, it’s easy to find the source of the smell. One of the reasons pet odors linger is that we don’t always clean the area as well as we’d like. Urine, in particular, contains uric acid, which smells terrible and is difficult to clean! If you have a recent pet mess, now is the time to tackle it. Soak the area in some white vinegar. While the acidic vinegar smells even worse at first, it breaks down the uric acid. Simply flush the vinegar out with regular water and pat the area dry.
Set in uric acid is much more difficult to remove. With time, it soaks into the undercoating, making it difficult to reach in order to remove it for good. A deep cleaning is necessary to fix any lingering causes of odor.
Paint and Smoke Odor
Paint holds odors long after the cause has vanished. Cleaning a kitchen after a grease fire takes a lot of effort because the scent has actually soaked through to paint layers beneath the surface. Home odor removal can stump even dedicated DIYers. If you find yourself stumped, you need a professional cleaning service to help you. Professionals assess whether they need to strip your paint entirely, or if it’s possible for a professional cleaning to save it.
If you’re ready for a lot of work, one method to finally eliminate smoke odors in paint is to get rid of it. Strip the paint off the walls, treat the walls, and then paint over it. It’s a great thing to do if you were planning to remodel anyway. If you didn’t have that kind of time, speak to a professional.