How To Make Your Own Carpet Freshener}

How to Make Your Own Carpet Freshener

by

D Roth

It’s not just homes with kids and pets that benefit from carpet deodorizers. Household odors from cooking, smoking, even using commercial cleaning products seep into our curtains, couches and carpets.

If you’ve ever tried the store-bought carpet cleaners, you may have purchased the brand or scent that smell sickly sweet, even long after you’ve vacuumed. You’ll find people wrinkle their nose more at the “clean” carpet than the original smells. Some deodorizers are more obnoxious than the odors you’re trying to remove. Those canisters seem to just sit on the shelf or under the kitchen sink, unused week after week. We don’t want to use them and we can’t justify throwing them out.

Why buy carpet deodorizers you end up not liking and not using? Not only are store-bought deodorizers full of unnecessary chemicals and masking perfumes, they’re rather expensive. You can make your own at home instead for only pennies.

For really simple carpet deodorizing, all you need is some baking soda. But if you want to add some good scents to your home, you can also add flowers or essential oils to the soda.

First, we recommend purchasing a large bag or box of baking soda at a bulk store like Costo or Sam’s Club. It’s incredibly inexpensive in this size, making your carpet deodorizers even more economical.

You’ll also need a shaker of some sort. This can be a mason jar with holes punched into the lid, a large spice container, or, dump out your commercial carpet deodorizers and re-use that container for your own mix. Other containers will work just fine, too, like a coffee can or even a plastic food container. And you don’t have to put holes in the lid. You can always just scoop some out with your hand and spread it evenly over your carpets.

Next, you can add some dried flowers or essential oils to your mix. Or both. Some good choices for flowers, or even aromatic leaves, are lavender, chamomile, rose petals, cinnamon, or eucalyptus. Or create your own combination of flowers, leaves, and oils.

You can purchase flowers and leaves from lots of places online, or you can call around to some local health food stores to see if they sell bulk herbs and spices. Usually they’ll have flowers and such for making herbal teas, poultices, and whatever else you can think of. You can leave them whole, but you might find it works better if you crush or grind them to a fine powder.

When you use essential oils, add a few drops to your baking soda and mix it real well. It might take some time for the scent to permeate throughout the mix. But, baking soda is absorbent for liquids and odors, which is why we use it for carpet deodorizing. So it will absorb the scent of the oils, too.

When you’re ready to vacuum, simply shake your homemade carpet deodorizer on the carpets. Let it sit at least for an hour, but you can also leave it overnight. Then vacuum it up and enjoy your fresh smelling carpets!

For some other helpful uses of your new home made carpet deodorizer, sprinkle some on the floorboards of your car or pour down your kitchen or shower drains to freshen them up.

Not only will making your own carpet freshener save you money, but you will enjoy your home all the more for it.

Dave Roth owns and operates the Vacuum Cleaner Talk website,

a site devoted to vacuum cleaner reviews

of brands such as oreck, miele, and

electrolux vacuum cleaners

.

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How to Make Your Own Carpet Freshener

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