Just a Smell Thing

I have this thing with smells.  It’s more like a fear.  An anxiety.  A worry.  A trepidation. A serious concern.

Are you prepared?

I’m afraid that my house smells really bad and I don’t know it.

Whew.  I’m glad I got that out of my system.

I’ve never been as worried about my own personal smell.  I mean, it’s the 21st Century.  If people have body odor, there are gazillions of remedies.  I just bathe regularly, have lotions/perfumes, and keep my clothes clean.  It’s a no brainer.

But as for my entire house?!  Man.  There are tons of opportunities for a house to be odiferous.  If that’s that not a word, then it should be.

For one, I’m married to a boy.  Any wife, mother, sister, basically any female for that matter, will tell you that men have a bit of a smell issue.  Men can be plain out stinky.  And the thing is, they’re proud of it.  Until my dying day, I will never understand that logic.

Aside from boys, houses contain many dirty things that can lead to stink. *Warning: if you are especially delicate, you may want to stop reading now.*  Dirty laundry, wet towels, grody dishes, burned food, smelly garbage, and gross bathrooms.

How can I stop all that stink?!?!

When I’m smelling something particularly funky, I attack my house with cleaning products and try to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.  But, what if I’m used to some nasty stench and don’t even know it’s there because I smell it all the time?  What if everyone thinks my house is nasty, but no one tells me?   Welcome to my deepest fear, dear readers.

There are some things I do regularly to try and keep my house smelling good.  The most obvious one is to keep the house clean.  We take out the trash often.  Well, Timothy takes the trash out.  But I deserve some credit because I’m the one who “reminds” him.  ”Remind” is such a nicer word than “nag.” But moving on.

Febreze fabric freshener is one of my favorite tools.  I spray it on the sheets, pillows, couch cushions, rugs, shower curtain, and freshly vacuumed carpet.  I also spray it on my dirty laundry pile.  Just for extra measure.

My third weapon in my odor arsenal is the glorious candle.  I have at least one candle going on at all times.  If you ever want to get me a present and don’t know what to get me (as if this would ever happen, I’m excellent at present hinting), you can get me a candle.  I’d love you forever.  Unless it smelled weird.  Then that would totally defeat everything.

My last technique is one I’ve only used once.  But I’m pretty sure it works.  The other night, we were expecting company and in a last minute flurry of smell-conquering, I grabbed some Febreze air spray.  (So I own pretty much every Febreze created.  Don’t hate.)  Then I sprayed it into the space between our front door and our screen door.  So in theory when people open the door to knock, they are instantly greeted with a lovely smell.  I’m pretty confident this method works because the first thing one of our guests said was that the house smelled good.  Bada bing, bada boom.

What about you guys?  Does anyone know any smell good techniques?  I’d LOVE to hear them!!!

~Whitney