Homes can smell great, or they can smell bad. Life and your daily habits contribute to how your home smells. Anyone with pets, or kids doing sports knows what I’m talking about. There are simple things to you can to make your house smell good! Try any of these tips and your house will smell fantastic in no time!
Table of Contents
How to Make Your House Smell Good
Essential Oils Diffuser
We love, love, love our essential oils diffuser. In fact, I have three in our house — in multiple rooms. Essential oils are great to lift moods and they make your house smell welcoming.
We use different oils depending on what we mood we want to create. For example: for peaceful transitions at bedtime, I diffuse lavender essential oil. This is a wonderful scent that has a calming effect.
At Christmastime we diffuse siberian fur and cinnamon. What a light, fresh aroma that’s welcoming and calming at the same time. We absolutely LOVE this combination! We diffused this every day in December. It’s my favorite scent at Christmas!
Other times I’ll diffuse orange for a fresh and calming scent.
Cotton Ball Diffuser
If you don’t have an essential oil diffuser, you can use a bowl of cotton balls to help spread pleasant scents to make your house smell good. Just add a drop of essential oil to each cotton ball and put them in an open bowl. The scent will naturally fill the air.
You can also do this with natural elements like pine cones. Grab a bag full of pine cones from outside and clean them off. Place them in a decorative bowl and put some essential oils on the pine cones. Just like when you buy expensive potpourri from the store, the pine cones, will emit the scent for days.
Make a Stove Simmer
For a quick fix, you can make a stove stop simmer potpourri using common elements you may already have. I love the smells that come from these items on the stove. Some things you can consider putting in a pot of water are:
- Cranberries
- Cinnamon sticks
- Bay leaves
- Rosemary stems
- Orange or lemon slices
- Apple juice or sliced apples
- Spices like cloves or nutmeg
How Can I Make My House Smell Good All The Time?
To get lasting scents so your house smells good all the time, go a little deeper than surface scents. We’re talking about cleaning products. Chose products that don’t have heavy cleaning smells, but that are light and airy.
And, be sure to maintain the cleanliness of your home.
- Sweep, vacuum, and mop regularly
- Wash blankets and pillows that are used in the living room. Keeping clean linens in rooms will help freshen your home.
- Clean up after pets. If you have cats, be sure the litter box is always fresh. With dogs, be sure to bathe them regularly. It’s easy to get attached to our pets and be immune to their stinky smells.
Shoes
Put dryer sheets inside shoes that are sitting around in the shoe bin. One dryer sheet per shoe. This will help contain and shoe smell from coming into the house.
Clean the Trash can
Give your trashcan a good scrub. Once it’s clean and you put a new trash bag in, add a tablespoon of baking soda. This will help eliminate smells by absorbing them before they can linger in the air. Do this each time you change the trash.
Clean Garbage Disposal
Grind orange or lemon peel in the garbage disposal to create a fresh citrus scent in the kitchen. This also cleans the garbage disposal of unwanted scents that might be stinking your kitchen.
How Can I Make My House Smell Nice Naturally?
Candles and Soaps in Closets
My mother in law used to have a closet just for her candles and fragile glassware. I used to love to open the doors to this pantry because the light scents of her vanilla and lavender candles came wafting out.
This is a great trick to keep linens smelling light and fresh, and to have a place where you have fresh scents. A closet is a perfect place for musty smells to permeate, so by having candle scents in there, it’s one less place in your house that will smell.
Use Scented Vinegar for Cleaning
I love using vinegar to clean. It’s a natural cleaner and you can tell things are clean! I love using vinegar to clean toilets and it makes it easy for me to get the kids to help because I don’t have to worry about them using harsh chemicals. Here’s a quick recipe on How to Make Scented Vinegar.
How Do You Get Rid of Odors in a House?
You can get rid of odors in your house by doing a deep clean. Use the scented vinegar and make sure to get in the nooks and crannies. Once the house is super clean, you can use some of the above tips to add fresh scents to make your house smell great again!
Let us know your favorite hack to make your house smell good!
Comments & Reviews
Stacie says
Thanks for the tips! With four cats and two guys living here, I need all the help I can get.
Michelle says
Wow this is such a valuable post. I love the essential oil diffusers, scented vinegar, and stovetop simmer. These are the ones I love to do.
Gina says
Great tips! I love the idea for boiling water and adding in cinnamon, cloves, apples, etc… so easy and smells so good!
Lisa J O'Driscoll says
Awesome tips! With two kids and two cats, I need all the help I can get!
Jaclyn says
I love it when our house smells good, thanks for sharing all these tips!
Audrey says
This is beyond helpful!! I have 5 kids – 4 of them sons and I’m always looking for ways! I just sent this link to my sister, too!!
Jenny says
These tips are great! I have 3 boys (well – 4 if you count my hubs) and love finding ways to make my house smell better. Love simmering stuff on the stove!
Ellie says
Thanks for sharing, some of these tips I never would’ve thought of- like the baking soda to absorb garbage odors- I will definitely have to try that!
Maike says
Love these tips. I love having a house that’s not just nice and tidy, but also smells nice. So this is very much up my alley! I’ve never thought about using lemon peel for the garbage disposal, but it makes total sense. Thanks for the inspiration.
Kerrie Mendoza says
I love boiling a pot on the stove with cinnamon, cloves, lemon and water. It makes the house smell fantastic and puts moisture in the air.
Great tips – everyone wants to make sure their house smells great.
Vera Sweeney says
Such great tips! Love your ideas.
Kelsey Apley says
Thank you! I am always looking for ways to freshen our home.
Scarlet says
Oh, I like that trick for cleaning the garbage disposal. Mine always smells whenever I turn on the dishwasher. I bet grinding the citrus peels will make the house smell great!