The question is pretty much in the title. Obviously “good” is subjective. I would like to find an easy, set and forget way to make a room smell good as long term as possible. The less artificial/chemical-ish the smell, the better.
I’ve seen this around the net.
Put two cap fulls of vanilla extract in the oven, at 300, for an hour. They say you want to warm the vanilla and not actually cook it. Also don’t put two cups of vanilla in. It supposedly smells like the pillsburry dough boys butt.
What do motel room cleaning staff use to make motel rooms smell the way they do?
I’ve always kind of liked that scent…reminds me of vacation trips. Is it some specific spray or powder?
Ordinary canned spray scents, like Glade or Air-Wick, are pretty good, really. Also, scented candles can be nice. (Not for everyone; some people aren’t comfortable with the chemicals and solvents.)
Leave windows open on at least two sides of the room. Unless rain is a problem …
Keeping the place clean will go a long way to keeping it nice smelling.
That, IMO, is the biggest thing. If I get home and my house smells funky, the first thing I do is take the garbage out, that usually does the trick*, the next thing is cleaning (just with some 409 and a paper towel) the floor around the toilet. Gross, yeah, but the bathroom is right next to the door that I enter the house from.
IME, more often than not, a non constant bad smell is something going bad in your garbage. Take your garbage out often, especially if there’s raw meat in there (even just the packaging).
*Keep in mind, that after doing these things, it can still take up to 24 hours for a bad smell to totally dissipate.
Are there fragrant flowers that can thrive indoors in a flower pot and in daylight via a window or under a growlamp?
Living spaces pick up smells over time especially if they are carpeted and the inhabitants smoke, cook spicy foods regularly or have a dampness problem that encourages mold. If any of those are the case, the place will never smell truly good until you address the source of the problem.
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For very humid spaces, you can get a dehumidifier but you will need to run it daily during the humid seasons.
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For places with residual scents because of past behavior, you can rent or buy an industrial quality ozone generator and run it for a few hours. Those can do an outstanding job of neutralizing embedded smells permanently but you still have to address the source if it is ongoing.
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For cleanliness problems, you just have to vacuum, mop and take out your trash more. Throw away everything you don’t use. That makes the place look better and eliminates the source of weird smells. That includes everything from your refrigerator to your clothes closet.
Once you get back to a more neutral smell, then you can add scents for effect. There are many ways to do that but most of them don’t last very long. Some of the longest lasting and simplest that I know off are the oils that you put in glass containers with wicking rods sticking out. They sell those in stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond or online.
I agree that a clean room and house will be the place to start.
Bath & Body Works sells a Fragrance Plug called a Wallflower that you plug into an electrical outlet. It holds a small bottle thingy filled with scented oil that warms and releases the scent into the room They have lots of plug ins to choose from with a great choice of fragrances. They don’t cost very much and they work very well. I love using these and have used them for years.
The electric wax warmers also work great as an easy plug it in and forget about it way to keep your home smelling wonderful. Again, lots of cute ceramic warmers and scents to choose from. Yankee Candle, to me, has the longest lasting scents but I’m sure there are others that work just as well. One of my friends has a huge house. She also has five dogs and you would never know it. She uses the wax warmers in the kitchen, main hallway, bathrooms and bedrooms. Her house smells wonderful…
Replace the carpet if it’s carpeted. Repaint the room, first with KILZ primer, then the color of your choice.
I’ve been using a wax melter with cubes of wax that can be poured back into its container when you want to change scents, it works really well. I’m currently using the Frosted Pine and it’s been wonderful! You can find a wax melter and wax cubes at your local Dollar General.
If you can find a Scentsy dealer I totally recommend those. They’re plug-in warmers that use a light bulb to melt these wax scent cubes. They are really nice and not chemical-smelling at all, IMHO. But they’re sold by “Independent Consultants” similar to Tupperware and Pampered Chef.
I guess some people are happy with some sort of over powering ‘good’ smell to hide a bad smell. Put me with the other camp. If a room smells, I clean it and get rid of whatever the source of the odour is.
Thanks for the suggestions!
FluffyBob, the room doesn’t smell bad. I just want it to smell good.
And add some pure vanilla extract to the paint.
Why Semi-permanently?
get a portable toaster oven, and bake cake or cookies in there.
What does “good” mean to you in the context of smells?
For me, “good” is the smell of nothing, or the fresh air smell of outdoors. There is no man-made substance which smells good. No perfume, candle, etc. Not even cooking food; that’s fine in a kitchen while a meal is being prepared, but an hour later the same smell is just an undesirable stink.
So for me, what makes a room smell good is to have all the trash out, no dusty musty clutter, and all the windows open and the breeze blowing through.
Apparently that isn’t your idea of “good” though. So what is?
Dust smells bad. Throw curtains and other movable textiles in the washer. Thoroughly vacuum, or better yet steam-clean, the carpets. Wipe down all of the hard surfaces (yes, walls too) with warm water that has a touch of nice-smelling dish soap in it. Green Apple scent is my favorite.
With luck, this will leave you with a pleasant-smelling room.
Most rooms have some permanent ventilation system. It can be a small grate or vent near the floor or ceiling. Or a vent built in the window sill. Building regulations require one. But you might not even know it is there, or you might have closed it on a particular cold day and never opened it again. Find it and open it halfway. That will freshen up a room considerably. And might eliminate mould odors. I found out this the hard way, when I closed some vents because I thought they were just unintended gaps. If there is not one, the easiest way to install one is a small vent in a single glass pane window.
I find everything Scentsy** to smell like Satan’s asshole. YMMV. Try a whiff or three before purchasing, is all I’m sayin’ to ya.
** Followers of the epic Workplace Griping thread over in the Pit may recall that my boss a couple of years ago (“Grandboss” in that thread, since she was my boss’s boss) had one in our shared office; she loved it and the rest of us all hated it. The day she brought in “Blueberry Cheesecake” scented wax she damn near had a mutiny on her hands. I remember the name of the scent years later, and people, I have the memory of a lobotomized goldfish, so make of that what you will.