When selling your home, you want the smell of your house to be a positive memory experience for a prospective home buyer.
The human sense of smell is one of the strongest senses we possess. Our olfactory bulb is part of the limbic system, the system associated with memory.
This is important to you why?
Smells are most commonly tied to previous memories. We smell cookies and think about how Grandma used to make those amazing peanut butter cookies. Unfortunately foul odors bring up memories as well, but they usually aren’t so pleasant.
If you really want the sale of your home to be fast and easy, you’ve got to make sure you home smells good. Read on to find out the common causes of bad odors, how to fix them, and which scents may help you sell your home fast.
6 Common Causes of Funky Home Odors
We have all had a funky smell in our home at one time or another. Here are some tips to help you take care of the most common offenders.
1. Pet Odors
You may fancy yourself an amateur zoologist, but prospective buyers won’t!
Fix it tips:
If the litter box is clean, but still smells, try adding tea leaves to give it a fresh afternoon tea smell.
Carpets and furniture retain pet odor for a long time. A professional steam cleaning will help reach the odors beneath the carpet in the carpet padding. For extensive pet urine problems, you may want to change the padding completely.
Quick fix: Sprinkle baking soda on your carpets and then vacuum to help mask the smell of the city zoo in your living room.
2. Pests
That one dead mouse behind the refrigerator sure smells like a dead buffalo in the living room. Before selling your home, you should evaluate the need of an exterminator.
Fix it tips:
Move large appliances, such as the refrigerators and stoves, and clean behind them. All sort of smelly culprits like to hang out in the dark.
If you find vermin, make sure to clean them up right away. When vermin corpses decay, they often degrade into a fluid that can be absorbed by wood, flooring and insulation, causing the smell to linger even after the vermin corpses have been removed.
Quick fix: Many people believe a few drops of peppermint oil can help mask the smell.
3. The Refrigerator
Did you leave Aunt Laura’s yummy lasagna in the fridge too long? Odors love to linger in the fridge, and often the surrounding kitchen.
Fix it tips:
After cleaning out the refrigerator, leave a small open box of baking soda inside to help absorb future smells.
Clean the drip tray underneath the refrigerator, as it often holds dirty, bacteria-ridden water.
If you have a frosty freezer, defrost it. Smells can be trapped in the frost on your freezer.
Spread baking soda or coffee grounds on a cookie sheet and place it in the fridge for a few hours to help remove smells.
White vinegar can also help neutralize many odors. Even better, you can mix white vinegar with water and use it to clean out your fridge.
Make it smell yummy: Place a couple drops of vanilla on a few cotton balls then place those in the refrigerator.
4. Toilets
Of course they should be clean, but also check the base of the toilet for any smells. (I know, it sounds a very glamorous activity.) If the seal between the toilet and sewer line is old, dried or cracked, odors may come creeping up from the sewer.
Fix it tips:
Replace wax ring on all your toilets. It provides a watertight and airtight seal between your toilet and the pipe below. This is a very cheap fix if you do it yourself. Replace a Toilet’s Wax Ring
5. Sinks
Sinks, or should I say the drain attached to your sinks, can cause all manner of turned up noses.
Fix it tips:
Make sure the sink overflow is not obstructed.
Most sinks have a P-trap that holds water and helps provide a seal against sewer gases. If water from the trap has leaked out or waste has built up in the trap, it can cause odors. The P-trap is often an easy fix with a big wrench and a bucket.
The garbage disposal can also be a culprit. Most people don’t let their disposal run long enough when flushing waste down the sink. Run the disposal until it sounds clear of food and then let it run for another five seconds.
Disposals are self cleaning, but over time anything can start showing some funk. The following process has worked for me before, but make sure to read and find out what your disposal can handle.
- Plug the sink and fill it with hot water and dish soup.
- Remove the stopper and run the disposal.
- Throw a couple of ice cubes and a little sea salt down the disposal and run it again. This tends to dislodge more grime.
- Finally, grind up a few lemon peels in the disposal to give it a fresh smell.
6. Smoke
It gets into everything. Whether you are talking about tobacco or cooking smoke, it will linger around your home for quite some time.
Fix it tips:
I recommend a carpet and furniture steam cleaning for any home with the smell of smoke.
If it is excessive, you may even need a good duct cleaning and ozone treatment.
Fresh paint is also a help.
Quick fix: Try dryer sheets. They can help draw out the smell and bring a cheery scent to the room.
Odors That Help To Sell Your Home
Buyers are on the alert during a showing, looking for any possible problem or masking of a problem. Pass on the potpourri and the air fresheners. Your home should smell like the cleaning crew just left.
Citrus smelling cleaners do a great job. The fresh paint smell is fantastic, too. All of these scents help conjure up a buyer’s memories of a clean, new place…a place they can put their own mark on.
Now you should have a home with no negative smells which means no negative memories. The housing market is a competitive marketplace and any advantage you can give yourself is important. Use the psychology of smell to your advantage when selling your home.
Do you have any tips for home odor removal? Share them in the comments.
Featured Image via USDAgov Flickr modified under Creative Commons.
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