A challenge many faces during winter is ensuring they remain warm and cozy by leaving windows closed without their home becoming stuffy. Naturally, the less ventilation and flowing air in a room, the stuffier it becomes which creates uncomfortable smells, often resembling that of mold. This is however not a fatality, as there are several ways of getting rid of these smells for the whole of winter without letting the icy wind.
Ventilation
There are several ways of ventilating rooms without necessarily opening the windows, though leaving some ajar for a few minutes every day may help. You can use the venting fans in your kitchen or bathroom, which essentially ‘recycle’ the air to strip it of smells that may have latched on to it. You may even place a scented candle or automatic air freshener in front of these venting fans, as artificial agents have got chemical properties that ensure their pleasant smells remain. It means that the room will not only lose its stuffiness, but a smell of your choice will easily
circulate through it.
Dehumidifying
Mold and mildew thrive in humidity. During winter, particularly when snowing, our homes can easily become humid. Frost can also make its way to your windows or even pipes, which will encourage the growth of fungi, often hardly visible to the naked eye, that will give your home an ‘old attic’ smell. Purchasing a dehumidifier is a potential solution to your stuffiness problem, and will require very little effort on your end. You can order one online, and the machine works simply by being plugged in.
Baking soda
If the smell is coming from a particular item, sprinkling it with baking soda, letting it sit for a few hours will help and vacuuming it off. Curtains and carpets, in particular, can easily store dust and even mold which will gradually give your home an unpleasant smell. You can use a vacuum cleaner to clean the dust from carpets and rugs. We recommend to read vacuum cleaner reviews before making your purchase design. This is a good resource to read best selling vacuum cleaner reviews: http://www.onlycanistervacuum.com/best-canister-vacuum-guide/
A top notch vacuum is able to clean all dust and dirt, but it won’t remove the smell. For why, you need to use chemicals like baking soda to get rid of the unpleasant smell completely.
Taking items outside
Simply taking dusty items outside can make as big a difference as cleaning them. The cold isn’t hospitable to mildew, which is likely to die from just a few hours outside. Furthermore, this facilitates the natural flow of air in the room, which will help to reduce stuffiness. You need only take out chairs, pillows, couches or carpets you believe ‘smell’ the most in the morning and bring them back in at night.
Ground Coffee
Not only does coffee smell enticing to most people, but it’s also a powerful smell-absorber. Putting ground coffee in old socks and then placing them around the living room and bedrooms can do wonders for your musty smells. Within a few hours, a natural and gentle coffee smell will have replaced that of stuffiness, without the need for artificial agents (which some are allergic to) that can irritate the nose, throat, and eyes.
Should you find that you are dealing with extreme stuffiness, you may consider a combination of all methods listed above. Just remember that the best precaution is prevention, and so planning ahead by ‘deodorizing’ the room, keeping its air supply as high as you comfortably can, and not letting furniture get dusty may save you a lot of work.