I have covered every possible stink your house can muster. From the roof to the basement. Closets, cabinets, sinks, showers, washing machines, dishwashers, smoke, skunks, sewage - even those ‘mystery’ odors that are driving you nutty.

This IS the encyclopedia of for getting rid of bad house smells.

Right now, I’m running a special for $12.95. And I’ll only be selling the e-book version for a couple of months at most.

So if you want it now, and you want it cheap, don’t hesitate.

But as any avid onion cooker knows, when you throw those ends in the trash, they can stink up the entire kitchen - even when your trash can has a lid on it. It’s almost like an oniony smelling film covers the walls or something.

Unfortunately if you’re an apartment dweller, you can’t always just jump up and take your onion ends to the dumpster or the trash room.

That’s why I decided to try the Glad Force Flex Tall Kitchen Bags. They have a built in odor neutralizer. So I figured that would be the ultimate cure for those occasional trash bag stinks.

The copy on the box says “fresh, clean scent.” But that’s not true. It does have a scent. Although I wouldn’t call it fresh and clean. It reminds of an attempt at fresh. Pseudo-fresh. (But it’s going in the trash can, right?)

Over the course of the day I put in: pancakes with syrup, a half eaten pizza, apple skin and core, grapefrut skin, microwave popcorn bag, and yes… about a quarter of a medium sized white onion.

I just opened the trash can lid and took a whiff. Hideous.

Then I closed the lid, and smelled around the trash can. I could still smell the trash.

Not only that, the trash odor mixed with the ‘fresh, clean scent’ of the bag. So it created an entirely new odor in the kitchen. And it ain’t a fresh, clean scent.

My synopsis? Not a keeper.

Now excuse me while I go take out my trash.

So I had no idea that hunters sometimes go through elaborate odor elimination rituals before hitting the great outdoors.

It’s true. They do so in order to sneak attack their human scent savvy prey.

In fact there’s an entire treasure chest of products specifically designed to get rid of odors from the human body.

Dead Wind Down is one such brand.

They manufacture a laundry detergenet called ScentPrevent that uses a patented bio-engineering process known as Enzyme Scent Prevention. This nifty little strand of enzymes prevent odor causing bacteria from forming.

If you’re the parent of maturing, sports plaing teenager, this stuff might be a godsend.

I’m curious to see how it works smell-wise so I’m ordering a bottle.

Stay tuned for my upcoming review.

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.

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

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’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

Paint odor is strong. But new carpet smell has a more chemical element to the olfactory nerves. And while paint odor usually dissipates in a few days, new carpet smell can linger for weeks or months, depending on the type of carpet you buy and where it’s manufactured.

What can you do to avoid this odorous situation? Look for eco-friendly, low offgassing carpet.

GreenFloors sells low offgassing carpet for both homes and commercial locations.

One square yard of GreenFloors carpeting will keep approximately forty plastic containers out of our landfills. That’s because most of the residential carpets they sell are made from 100% post-consumer recycled food and drink containers.

The recycled carpet is made from polyester, which has fewer smell issues that other types of carpeting.

Plus it meets the Carpet and Rug Institutes Green Label Plus tests for indoor air quality.

You can order 4 free carpet samples from GreenFloor to give it a test run before you order. You only pay shipping and handling, which is less than $6. They also have 5-8 free samples for $11.90, and 9-12 samples for $17.85.

Alexis Dawes
Editor, No More Smelly House

But the one thing I realized is that you can’t have a nice smelling home if your constantly trying to cover up bad odors with a can of air freshener.

Air freshener to odor is like putting a bandage on a gun shot wound. It ain’t gonna work.

You have to neutralize the bad odors first.

Fresh2 provides a rather ingenious method for neutralizing smells, without even having to think about it. In fact, every time you turn on the light you’re killing odors.

Fresh2 is a titanium dioxide coated fluorescent light bulb.

According to Ellis Yan, CEO of Technical Consumer Products, which manufactures fresh2, “When this coating is exposed to fluorescent light, which is given off by the bulb itself, it produces a photocatalytic reaction. This creates very strong oxidizers that completely break down odors. The purifying process begins to work 10 minutes after the bulb is turned on.”
 
The bulbs themselves are only 23 watts, so they’ll work in any standard sized socket. However because they’re compact fluorescent bulbs, they give off the same light as a 100 watt bulb, at a lower energy cost.

They’ll last approximately 10,000 hours or three years - which totally justifies the price tag of $19.95 for two bulbs.

Fresh2 bulbs are only available through the manufacturers web site.

A review of Fresh2 bulbs can be found at The Gadgeteer.

Alexis Dawes
Editor, No More Smelly House

(And if you haven’t, you’re the luckiest pet owner in the world… go give your furry friend a treat.)

One of the biggest problems with pet urine is that most people don’t catch it right away. It could be hours before you realize that something’s rotten in Denmark.

By then, your little buddy has possibly revisited the spot again.

What started as surface dampness has turned into wet carpet, wet padding, and oftentimes a semi-permanent subfloor odor. It’s definitely one of the more dreaded events in a pet owners home, as it takes a moderate amount of time and money to get rid of a urine smell that has saturated the subfloor.

But now that problem is a thing of the past.

In February, STAINMASTER released a new line of carpet padding that contains a SpillNet® Protection System. The padding has a special antimicrobial treatment, called Fresh Dimension™ that fights the growth of odor causing mold, mildew and fungus in the cushion. Plus the breathable moisture barrier in the cushion prevents liquids from penetrating the cushion.

So now when there’s a pee-pee accident, the spill stays on top of the cushion for easier removal. No more leakage down to the subfloor. Hallaleuah!

This is the type of investment that’ll easily pay for itself if you ever decide to sell your home. For cat lovers, who are smell haters, this type of padding is a must.

Interested? Ask your local carpet supplier for the Stainmaster Ultra Life carpet cushion.

Alexis Dawes
Editor, No More Smelly House