I’m not a huge fanatic of spray air fresheners for the task of getting rid of odors. They don’t really work in that aspect.

But I can appreciate a nice scent once I’ve chased the bad odor bugaboo away.

One of my new favorites is California Scents.

I knew they were good when I went to my local office supply store, went up the escalator, and was greeted with a surprisingly strong - yet pleasant - smell of one.

I asked the salesman how long the air freshener had been open. “Four days,” he said. “It’s really potent!”

So I purchased one that was strawberry scented. It comes in a tuna fish-like can, only smaller.

When you open it up, it looks almost like a spongey material. That spongey material is completely biodegradable. In fact, the California Scents themselves are labeled as organic.

I put mine in the closet. It lasted a good month before it began to die down.

Because the can is small, they’re not really suited for a bedroom sized space.

But if you want a long-lasting, environmentally friendly smell in small area, you can’t go wrong with California Scents.

Last week I went to my local pharmacy to scope out some new odor eliminating goodies.

I’m in Canada right now. And even though I’m a stones throw from the US border, there’s still a fair selection of products here that they don’t sell in the States. So every few days I go try something new from the smell good aisle.

Anyway I picked up a bottle of this stuff called Fresh Ayre.

From first glance it sounded interesting. According to the directions on the packaging, you put a drop on a lightbulb… turn on the light… and it helps to freshen the air.

I’m all about quick and easy odor elimination, so I dropped it in the shopping cart.

I decided to give this Fresh Ayre a test yesterday. But when I opened the package, the smell of a clean public restroom rudely insulted my olfactory system.

Mind you, I didn’t even open the bottle. I just pulled it out of the paper packaging.

The problem? Fresh Ayre isn’t a neutralizer. In other words, it doesn’t get rid of odors. It’s a deodorizer. Like a can of air freshener, it just sits on top of the odor.

I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if it was a scent I liked. But clean public restroom smell isn’t something I easily vibe with. So I threw it in the trash.

The moral of the story… read the packaging.

Deodorizers = Bad odor + Artificial smell

Neutralizers = Bad smell gone

A good friend of mine recently purchased a sofa/loveseat set from one of those “get-it-all-for-only-$499″ furniture stores.

It was cute… leather look. But it had a hideous new furniture smell. Almost as overbearing as cat pee. And cat pee is like the nuclear bomb of smells in my book.

Unfortunately the problem she’s having isn’t that uncommon.

Most new furniture off-gasses, just like new carpeting. It’s the materials they’re made from.

But for those of us who have sensitive olfactory systems, that new furniture smell can be annoying at the least, to downright sickening.

What can you do?

Avoid the problem altogether by choosing furnishings that are made from green materials. Green meaning eco-friendly. They might be made from recycled or natural materials. Or they’re manufactured in a way where off-gassing possibilities are minimized.

Here are some green furnishing resources:

Viesso
Sleek, contemporary pieces, like this yummy red sofa. You can customize most of the items. I love their stuff.

Green Design Furniture
Lots of wood-based pieces.

Inhabitant
A blog that specializes in building and designing green homes.

Green Home Guide
A directory of furniture companies that specialize in green goods.

Fold School
Okay so this isn’t a furniture company. It teaches you how to make cardboard furniture for kids. My daughter is a cardboard freak - as are most kiddies.

I have a really big phobia about going to someone’s house and having to use the bathroom.

I’m not talking about an odorless in and out bathroom break. I mean a poop. A bowel movement.

The thing is, you just don’t know how badly you’re going to smell up the bathroom, or the persons house, for that matter. And let’s face it, poop smell is bad. But poop and air freshener is 1,000 times worse. It travels through the air like a smelly laser beam!

I guess that’s just the woman in me.

Well imagine my delight when I recently ran across an odor neutralizing product called Just a Drop.

You squeeze a bit of Just a Drop into the toilet water before you assume the sitting position.

It has a slightly minty smell that creates a blocking layer in the water. That blocking layer traps 98% of odors before they escape into the air.

Right now I’m in Montreal, and I was able to purchase Just a Drop from the local Jean Coutu pharmacy. (In the US, you have to order from the Just a Drop web site.)

Of course, I gave it a test. I won’t go into the precise logistics of my test. But it did indeed work as the bottle stated. Most of the odor was gone.

My 4-year old daughter - a budding stink-a-phobe - religiously uses it. For her it works so well that I find myself checking to make sure she’s made a bowel movement. I never smell anything when she comes out of the bathroom!

And what’s really neat is that the bottle is small enough (like an eyedrop bottle) that you can carry it into the bathroom, without people wondering what it is.

Alexis Dawes
Editor, No More Smelly House