Stinky House - Help!

My house gets like this also, just a musty stuffy type of smell. The best way I've found to take care of this is to open all the doors/windows on a nice day and let the house air out. I put fans in a few windows/doors and get as much airflow as possible. This includes the bedrooms. It just helps the house smell fresher and cleaner. No amount of air fresheners or anything else ever works as well.

I actually just steamed cleaned my carpets and washed down my walls and it just smells, looks cleaner!

I'm so glad nobody has suggested using air fresheners. These not only just temporarily cover up odors, but they've also been found to be very toxic.

One thing I found worked well is to sprinkle baking soda in your carpets, let it sit for a bit, then vacuum. Instant fresh!

You could try putting a small open bowl of baking soda in every room for a day or so if it's not bad. However, the best thing for musty smells, because my bathroom gets a little musty from time to time because of all the hot showers and having to keep the door closed so my 15 mo. old doesn't get into the toilet is DampRid. You can get it at Home Depot in the paint department of all places, and it not that expensive. About 5 bucks or so. Also in the bathroom and kitchen clean the drains. I saw it on How Clean Is Your House -- boil some water. Pour equal parts of salt and baking soda (about 1/4 cup of each) down the drain and then pour 1/3 to 1/2 cup of white vinegar down the drain. Let it bubble up for a minute and then dump the boiling water down the drain to remove the salt from the drains. It works really well.

Is your basement musty & needing cleaning? Sometimes the mustiness seeps up from the basement in our house. Sometimes cleaning the floors with a dash of lemon oil in the water will make a difference. Freshing carpets with a carpet fresher too. Every so often washing the curtains freshes the room. Having animals, if they are indoor ones adds to mustiness too.

How old is your house? Is it possible you have mold in the walls/crawl space? It's amazing how just a little bit of it can smell up an entire house. Even if it's just forming, you can smell a moth ball kind of smell. You might want to have that checked.
I make sure garbage cans are cleaned out regularly... I have yet to figure out how they get dirty when they are always lined with a bag, but have you ever smelled an empty one?!?! I have even had to replace them after finding that one seemed to be the source... after being bleached... of my kitchen stinking. Plastic does obsorb.
I also make sure to open up all the windows, doors, etc. once a week or so and let things air out... nothing helps a stuffy, smelly house better than fresh air... rain or shine.

Carpets can hold a lot of odors. If you have carpets and haven't cleaned them lately, I would recommend doing that. I have found that mixing in some "Natures Secret" into the cleaning solution works well. It is an enzyme that removes odors. It can be found in pet stores like PetSmart.

I also found a great brand of vegetable wax scented candles that I enjoy. They don't leave any black soot like paraffin candles and the scent replaces that "old wood" smell that is sometimes impossible to completely remove from a house. If you'd like more information here is the website: http://www.BellaMiaCandle.scent-team.com

Well, I'm not sure about the smell in particular, but as far as keeping the house clean, etc... I swear by FlyLady. I was the most disorganized cluttered home and it always seemed as if it needed cleaning. Until I started FlyLady and now there is no smell, I don't have to have marathon cleaning sessions, and my house always seems to be tidy.
I highly recommend it, and best of all, it's free!
www.flylady.net just start with the baby steps... it's a lot to take in, but in no time the smells and clutter will be gone!
J.

Hi L.,

I have the perfect solution. I use Shaklee and love it. Shaklee is a 50 year old company and has been green for 50 years. Our products work. If you live in or around Portland, vancouver, salem, area please let me know and I will give you a free trial of our products for two weeks. You can use the products before you buy. They are awesome, do not cover up but only clean up. They are so economical that you rarely have to buy because they are so highly concentrated.

Go to http://nontoxiccleaners.myshaklee.com and see if you want to try them. People who use them just love them and once they try then they won't change. People have been using Shaklee for 20, 30 and 40 years and just love it.

N.
SAH Mom, Nana, Wellness Coach, and an advocate for "green".

Buy some plants if you don't have some already. one plant for every 100 square feet of your house. Our homes have the highest concentration of indoor pollution, and it is usually higher than outdoor.

Change your sheets, and wash your pillows no less than weekly. Get your carpets cleaned as they too can hold on to a whole bunch of oders.

If the smell has a moldy, musty oder to it check your house for mold. Most molds than grow in houses are toxic and can make your family seem like it never gets over that last cold.

To find out exactly what is polluting the air in your home, becuase bad smells typicaly are an indication of some form of pollution, you can get a kit to test your home. http://www.prolabinc.com/about.asp

Do you have carpets? Clean them with a rented Rug Doctor, and if mustiness is your problem, use Pine-Sol (a little) in the solution. You should get the attachment and clean your couches and other soft materials, too, for they may be holding the smell.

Consider wiping down walls. I highly recommend Pine-Sol, though. Nothing beats its ability to neutralize other smells.

I'm in exactly the same boat! I was going to post a request too, but you beat me to the punch. Thank you! My musty smell seems to be worse as you walk toward the basement stairs and it's worse for sure in the basement, but I wouldn't say it's overwhelming anywhere in the house. I keep thinking (God forbid) that there must be a leak somewhere but we haven't found anything. I, like you, feel that I keep a pretty clean house and I have deep-cleaned and gone through everything that I can think of, to no avail. Hoping to hear some great suggestions. Has anyone used those buckets of stuff you can buy to get rid of musty odors?

Thanks~Mary~

I'm glad you've noticed that scented air "fresheners" do nothing to get rid of the underlying problem. They also contain highly toxic ingredients, and make some people (including me) quite ill. Most scented candles also fall into this category. I would never want to expose a child to those cheerfully-advertised horrors.

I've used a terrific non-toxic product over the years that can be sprayed on surfaces and into the air. It's called Smells-Be-Gone (google for sources). It's so effective it can even significantly reduce skunk odor (I used it on a badly-skunked cat). It's great in stinky garbage cans and diaper receptacles.

Other great cleaners and de-stinkers are vinegar and baking soda (but use them separately, or they will foam copiously and neutralize each other). Both can be added to your laundry (vinegar is surprisingly effective as a fabric softener!), sprinkled or sprayed on moldy surfaces, and used in solution to clean floors. B-soda is excellent on carpeting. An open bowl of vinegar in a musty area is reported to help, but I've never tried that one.

Bac-Out or other enzymatic treatments can also be effective. Use in cleaning solutions for carpets, pour into drains (which can smell pretty awful, if you check), and on pet or kid "accidents."

Mustiness can originate from mold and mildew growing in walls and floors. If surface treatments don't help your problem, you might need to investigate behind all those nice, clean surfaces to really beat the problem.

And of course, ventilation is always helpful. Good luck. This can be a tough one.

I agree that you need to find the source of the odor and hopefully this weekend you will be succesful in that mission.I like the baking soda suggestions because its non-toxic. Once you find it and get it under control I recommend using Scentsy candles to keep your house smelling wonderful. Scentsy candles are flameless and are so much safer than traditonal candles especially around children and pets. There are over 80 scents to chose from and there are small, mid-size and large warmers in various styles and colors to warm the wax in. Check it out at www.scensty.com/nocommonscents. Good luck to you...this rain probably isn't helping either.

L.,
i suggest bio-ox citrus concentrate. It is all natural,completely safe for children and pets. Best of all it cleans most every surface in your house and does it very well.it is available through mamasource from good green products. You will not be sorry you bought it, it is wonderful. Completely eliminates odors including meldew and mold.also great for carpet cleaners.
L.

Try and air out the house every chance you get. Open windows, doors, etc. I have pets in the house too. Hope this helps.

Basic G Germicidal, Deodorizer, & Disinfectant! Safe for you, your children, your pets, and your husband :) !

www.ammas-mahma.myshaklee.com
Just search for Basic G or contact me and I will tell you more. The best thing a couple of my friends used this for are washing cloth diapers. Stink gone! I use it in the bathroom, stink gone! Use it in the kitchen or trash cans, stink gone! Disinfect after preparing meat, bacteria gone!

Good Luck,
Tes
Amma's Mahma
Portland, OR
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____@____.com

We live in an old house so I can relate to your problem. I picked up this trick from my friend who use to clean fire damaged homes. If you hang dryer sheets in all the closets and put them unseen throughout your house it keeps the house smelling fresh and seems to absorb the musty odors instead of just covering them. I also do this in my car. It even works with cigarette smoke. Hope that helps.

Living in the NW we tend to keep our homes sealed tight to keep out the moisture but that also can make them musty. One of the best things you can do is open all the doors and windows while you're cleaning and keep a few windows cracked to let in some fresh air all the time.

I second Shaklee. I am not a rep so I am not trying to make money off of you I just know from using it in our family for well over 25 years that it is awesome. We don't have any cleaning supplies in our house other then shaklee.

A few years ago, my in-laws used this non-toxic product they picked up at HomeDepot like DampRid: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xr5/R-100391308/h_... They tested it on an older RV they purchased, which smelled like mildew and had so much moisture in the air. Since it worked so well, filling a gallon jug, they tested it in different rooms throughout their house. I also played with the product by placing it in the trunk of my car. It works and costs less than $20.