How to get rid of the sour smell in the house

You need to start with the basics first; Chances are, if you’ve gotten to the point of looking for help getting rid of sour house odors online, then you need to do some serious cleaning. Set aside a day, or a weekend, specifically for cleaning.

If you don’t want to or can’t do it on your own, ask for help from people you live with. Perhaps you can also ask for help from your friends. Bribe them with pizza and beer or skewers and wine if necessary. Then use the following suggestions to rid your home of odor and maintain a fresh, aromatic, or at least breathable living space.

Elimination of the sour smell of the house

* Dry rooms first and then clean your basement so it’s empty of anything that might hold moisture and drain it in there as well. Remove the cardboard boxes.

* If you have a forced-air ducted heating and cooling system in your home, have the ducts checked. Decades-old homes can have mold, a lot of dirt buildup, and other unpleasant things that can cause odors. Your ducts may also be rusty now, so you may need to change them.

The newer ducts available on the market today are much more energy efficient. You’ll save air conditioning costs this summer if you get new ductwork. You can also hire a duct cleaning company to inspect the ducts you have right now. Some have a camera that can show you what’s in your ducts. Be careful who you mess with! Use a reputable company and check with the Better Business Bureau. Ask them for references. Some just do a little cleaning and spray on a deodorant. The budget to clean the ducts can be hundreds of dollars less than buying new ones.

* Check your carpets. Sometimes carpets are steam cleaned unprofessionally and there is a lot of water left behind. This causes mold and a related musty smell.

Remove your rugs and put in hardwood or similar flooring, with rugs that can be cleaned outside the house and dried before returning to the area. If your rugs are ten years old, it doesn’t hurt to remove them.

* You may have some kind of mold growing on your carpet or behind your wallpaper. Create a bleach solution (1:10 to start, then go up to 1:4 if that doesn’t work) and gently wash all walls and mops. Rent a hot water carpet cleaner and put a bleach solution in the reservoir instead of the soap they try to sell you. Add a drop or two of dish soap, but don’t add more. It is the water that cleans, not the soap. Adding too much soap will actually make the rug dirty because it doesn’t rinse and the soap sticks to the dirt.

* Although chlorine bleach is very noticeable in fading many things, you can risk using it for jobs with a strong odor, even on dark carpets. If you are still in doubt, there is always oxygen bleach. It kills “everything” that may be causing an odor and cleaning with hot water also helps allergies.

Keep babies off rugs, as breathing in chemicals of any kind is especially bad for them. If the smell comes back faster than you think it should, get a dehumidifier.

* Never use a dehumidifier where you have an open window or it will dry out the immediate atmosphere of your home. An air conditioner actually works even better because of the filtering system it has, but if it’s too cold where you live to keep using one, then stick with the dehumidifier.

* To remove that not-so-fresh smell from your linoleum or hardwood floors, simply mix a 3:1 solution of warm water and white vinegar in your mop bucket and get to work. Remember to break a window or two. Vinegar has a nice clean smell, but it’s strong.

Products to eliminate the sour smell of the house

* Buy a large pump of Febreze as it works on everything. Smelly baskets, sticky carts, sleeping bags that stink of campfire…whatever the smell, Febreze can suffocate it. You can get it in most supermarkets.

Another idea is to use a citrus odor neutralizing spray; It is so effective that beauticians use it in salons to remove perm odor.

* An ozone generator or airborne hydrogen peroxide device may also work, but they tend to be expensive and may not get to the root of the problem. Covering or filtering odors is always more expensive than removing their source.

* If you want something a little cheaper, you can try the Ozium Air Freshener – it’s the best way to keep the air in your home or workplace clean and smelling fresh. Ozium doesn’t cover up the odors associated with sour-smelling homes, it eliminates them!

Ozium, the original air purifier, is a chemical agent that actually removes unpleasant odors and reduces bacteria in the air. Ozium actually cleans the air through glycolized action. Ozium’s glycolized formula acts directly on the odor-causing particles in the air.

* Electrostatic air filters are good for getting rid of dust buildup, but they can be bad if they don’t work properly. Electrostatic air cleaners work by ionizing the air that passes through the filter, collecting dust from the air creating an electrostatic field, much like a comb collecting particles after passing through dry hair fast enough.

Why are electrostatic dust collectors bad for you? If they don’t work properly, they can produce ozone, which is a respiratory irritant. So be sure to do your research before investing in one of these air filters.

*Try Renuzit, in any scent. If you can, try to find the Super Odor Killer scent. The fragrance in SOK (introduced in 1972) is not easily identifiable, because SOK uses a mixture of leftover perfumes when fragrance manufacturers produced too much for another company’s orders.

Not only is this blend good for masking a variety of odors, it can be used slightly at higher fragrance levels without overwhelming the wearer. The popular and most available scent from Country Kitchen will also suffice.

* Fresh Wave has a variety of all-natural, non-toxic and environmentally friendly products for laundry, upholstery, flooring and ventilation that are designed to attract, capture and neutralize pungent odors in the home.

Prevention of the sour smell of the house

* The best way to prevent sour house odor from building up is to clean as you go. Put things away as soon as you are done using them. Throw things away as soon as you know you won’t be using them. Daily maintenance is the key to a breathable and livable home.

Have presence of mind when it comes to cleaning. Create a small space to donate and recycle things and clean it up as soon as it gets full. Limit your storage space and “junk” drawers so you don’t have the opportunity to dump clutter in a closet and forget about it.

* People will tell you that the best way to get rid of mold, one of the main contributors to household odor, is to use an ionizing air purifier to help remove pollutants and mold spores from the air. Well, they’re half right.

An air purifier is not a bad idea to prevent mold growth, but those ionized air filters can cause health problems if not built correctly. Sometimes if an ionizing air filter is not well built it will expel ozone which scientists will tell you is good for the atmosphere and bad for the lungs.

Serious complications can arise if you are using the wrong air purifier. Choose wisely and make sure you buy from a reputable company.