As a homemaker, you can make your home a place of rest and refreshment when you learn how to make natural air freshener for the home. Your family and visitors will love breathing in fresh scents without all the toxic ingredients.
How to Make Natural Air Freshener for Home
Natural air fresheners can be made from essential oils, baking soda, vinegar, potpourri, boiling herbs, or citrus.
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How Can I Make My House Smell Good Naturally?
You may not notice it all the time but the way a place smells can affect how much you enjoy being there. It can even affect your responses to circumstances and people.
(Yes, there is research into these things…)
Now it doesn’t mean you have to start drowning your home in pungent fragrances. At the very least, though, not having something unpleasant is always a good start.
When you want to step it up a little and add a pleasant aroma to your house, it might seem all that is available is the toxic artificial sprays.
Is there any way you can make your house smell good with natural ingredients?
A Clean Home Goes a Long Way
A clean home that has clean clothes and clean people in it may not have a noticeably sweet odour, but at least you will not have anything noticeably unpleasant.
So, before we get to the additions, we probably should start with how to eliminate odours in the first place.
The best way to do that is to clean up.
Dirty laundry, for instance, especially when they have been sweaty, can harbour a smell.
Wet clothing that may have been taken off the line prematurely can also have an unpleasant musky odour.
Dirty dish towels and stinky shoes also add to the overall smell of a home.
Then of course there is the good old toilet, and don’t forget the drains. Clogged drains can emit foul smells when food remains get stuck in them.
And how could we forget the garbage that has been hanging out in the kitchen for the past three days?
The point is that your home will begin to feel and smell fresher when you eliminate sources of stinky smells from the outset.
Please note, I’m not sending you into obsessive cleaning. What I am endorsing is general daily cleanups and timely deep cleaning.
That’s all.
Use Essential Oils to Make Your Own Natural Air Freshener
After we have set things in motion to keep out bad smells, here is one way to make a natural air freshener for your home.
Adding a few drops of your favourite essential oil to water and lemon juice will make a good natural air freshener.
You can choose from among the most popular essential oils. These include lavender, peppermint, lemon, orange, eucalyptus, tea tree and rosemary.
If you like having a variety, make a fresh mixture each week from a different essential oil, or for special occasions to spray in the air.
Baking Soda is a Natural Air Freshener for the Home
If you are not into essential oils or are trying to avoid sweet smells, baking soda is a good choice. For this, you can create a baking soda spray by mixing baking soda with warm water in a spray bottle.
This can be applied to sofas, sneakers, curtains, cushions, or just sprayed in the air.
If you don’t want to use it as a spray, you can mix dry baking soda with an essential oil and leave the mixture uncovered in the room you want to freshen up.
There is no end to the things you can do with baking soda in the home.
How to Make Natural Air Freshener for the Home using Vinegar
You may have been wondering about how you can use vinegar to make a DIY air freshener.
Vinegar is a natural and cheaper option for creating a nontoxic air freshener your family will love.
All it takes is one part vinegar mixed with five parts water and you’re good to go.
Be sure to use cleaning vinegar or undiluted distilled white vinegar for the spray bottle. If you prefer to use fruit vinegars, go for an open bowl and let the vinegar sit in that. Fruit vinegars may clog the spray top of your spray bottle.
You also want to avoid surfaces like marble or other stone countertops, waxed wood surfaces, unsealed grout, and of course, your houseplants.
(Just so you know!)
Of course you may be wondering how sweet that would smell.
In that case, you can add the usual few drops of essential oil to the mix and then spray away.
Using Citrus as a DIY Air Freshener
If you have smelled freshly squeezed lemons or oranges, then you will know why it is easy to want an air freshener made from citrus.
As with vinegar, citrus provides a natural way to deodorize a home but also add a nice fragrance along with it.
And it doesn’t get more natural than this: citrus peels and water.
That’s it!
Just let the citrus peels infuse in the distilled water and use your DIY citrus peel spray.
What better way to use those peels after you have had an orange or used a lemon?
(Well, you could make a nice tea with them or use them for marmalade.)
Making a DIY Air Freshener with Potpourri
The unfailing potpourri weighs in as a fun DIY project you can do with your children and even add to your homeschooling.
Potpourri is made of naturally dried flowers, herbs and spices.
Popular options for flowers include Gardenia, Geranium, Honeysuckle, Orange Blossom, Roses and mint blossoms. Common herbs and spices include Allspice, Bayleaf, Cinnamon, Cloves, Coriander, Nutmeg and Rosemary.
If you don’t see any that you would use, don’t worry. You are only limited by what’s in your garden and your personal preference.
You can also add dried fruit peels, like citrus peels, and even wood chips.
I can smell it already!
Here’s a detailed guide to making your own natural DIY air freshener potpourri.
Boiling Herbs or Baking Can Freshen the Home
I have had the most pleasant experiences in my home when I or someone else was boiling or baking something good.
I have boiled Jamaican sorrel to make our traditional Christmas drink, and the smell that infuses the house is unbelievable!
I can’t describe how sweet and happy it felt.
Then there was another time when my husband was boiling some medicinal herbs for the children – you cannot imagine the minty aroma that filled the house!
My point is that if you have the time, or if the weather is cold out, you can add a warm, sweet fragrance to your home by using the stovetop or the oven.
Put on something minty to simmer away or bake up a couple pies, cakes and puddings.
That will probably be the most fulfilling and memorable DIY air freshener you ever make as a stay-home mom!
How do you improve the freshness of your home? Let me know in the comments!
