Whether you’re a daily cleaner or more sporadic with your routine, certain smells in your home are hard to get rid of. While you may dream of your house always smelling of fresh citrus or clean linen, most indoor odors are reminders that you’ve cooked, played, slept, and lived in this home you’ve created. However, if you’d rather keep them to a minimum, we’ve put together a room-by-room guide to prevent any of these odors from building up and keep them from coming back so frequently.
Bathroom Odors
Toilet
The best way to keep your toilet smelling fresh? Clean it before you start to notice any funky build-up around the rim of water or under the seat.
Pro-Tip: Our Auto Dish Detergent can double as toilet bowl cleaner. Add 1 tablespoon to the toilet water, mix around with a toilet brush and use the brush to scrub away any stains and smells in the toilet bowl.
Washing Machine
Much like you should be cleaning the actual tools you clean your house with, you should also be cleaning your washing machine regularly before washing clothes in it. Since it comes in constant contact with water, your washing machine is the perfect environment for mold, which can produce some pretty smelly bacteria.
If you have a front loading washing machine, we recommend leaving the door open for a few hours after your last load of the day to allow all the moisture to dry and prevent mold build-up in the seal! At least once a month, add 2 tablespoons of your favorite Rockin’ Green detergent (we love using Active Wear Detergent for this since it includes tea tree oil) to the empty wash basin and run a rinse cycle on the hottest setting.
Bedroom Odors
Bedding
Our beds are a place that we spend a lot of time in — about a third of our time in, to be almost exact. If you aren’t washing your sheets and pillowcases regularly, they’re drowning in body oils, dead skin, sweat, and dirt from being slept on every night. All in all, our beds are not the cleanest of places.
If you prefer to shower in the morning, wash your sheets weekly, but if you shower at night, you can get away with washing your bedding every 2 weeks.
Closet
Smelly closet = perpetually smelly clothes. By keeping your closet door open at all times, it allows any smells to air out and prevents trapped moisture from producing odor-causing bacteria.
Pro-Tip: If you’ve noticed a lingering smell coming from your closet, remove all the clothes from your closet before airing out or deodorizing the area. These smells are most likely already embedded in the fibers of your clothing and they won’t fully disappear until you wash the affected items. Using a laundry pre-treatment like our Funk Rock either as a soak or like normal can help target the molecules trapped in your clothing’s fibers and get rid of them for good.
Living Room Odors
Pet Beds/Toys
We love our furry friends, but sometimes they stink, especially their beds, toys, and collar. These smells can get even worse if your pet sheds. As their fur falls out, it grows bacteria which results in funk.
While this is inevitable, bathing your pet regularly and cleaning the areas where they sleep and eat once a week can help get rid of any built-up odor and prevent it from appearing as often. If you notice strong smells coming from their bed or toys, soaking the items in our Funk Rock Laundry Pre-Treatment can restore even the nastiest pieces to their freshest selves.
Carpet
As you track dirt and dust throughout your home, the carpets and rugs spread around can absorb smells and create a real odor issue in your house.
Luckily, deodorizing them is super simple. Sprinkle Rockin’ Green Active Wear detergent over the carpets, let it sit for at least one hour, and vacuum after. To prevent any smells, complete this once a week.
Kitchen Odors
Dishwasher
Just like your washer, the dishwasher is a perfect spot for mold and smells. Leftover food particles definitely don’t help.
Refresh your dishwasher by running an empty dry-heat cycle once a month with a tablespoon of our Auto Dish Detergent in the dispenser. If you notice your silverware basket getting moldy, remove it and let it soak in the kitchen sink with two tablespoons of Auto Dish and warm water for 30 minutes. Rinse thoroughly before replacing.
Sink
Your sink is one of the dirtiest items in your home. Like the dishwasher, there’s often leftover food particles hanging around the basin and growing all kinds of odor-causing bacteria. If your sink has a garbage disposal, the smell is only going to get worse.
Make sure to clean your sink basin once a week, and occasionally deodorize the drain of your garbage disposal. To do this, pour and flush 1 tablespoon of Rockin’ Green Auto Dish Detergent down the disposal system with warm water. Keep in mind, make sure you’ve also cleaned any sponges you use to clean your sink’s basin to prevent the spreading of more bacteria.
Trash Can
Food stinks, but the culprit here might be your trashcan and not the trash itself. Crumbs and spills can create bad odors inside the can that linger despite regularly taking out the trash.
Pro Tip: Remove smells in your trashcan by sprinkling our Active Wear Detergent in the can and allow it to sit for at least 30 minutes. Follow behind by wiping the detergent out with a warm, damp cloth and drying with a dry cloth or paper towels.
Microwave
Microwaves have become a staple of quick cooking. Whether it’s thawing a frozen meal or reheating your leftovers from the night before, all of these smells mix and are prone to stay trapped within the confines of the machine. This could leave you with some pretty weird stench in your kitchen.
Start by cleaning any bits of food stuck in the microwave. Get rid of lingering smells by boiling a mixture of our Auto Dish Detergent and water inside the machine and let it sit for 30 minutes. The result? The lemon-fresh scent of your dreams.