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I'm reading a lot lately about the down sides of commercial air fresheners. We have 2 dogs in the house so having no air freshener at all is unrealistic. However, I'm partial to lighting an insence stick. Can anyone tell me is this eco at all and are there any downside to it as I'd be happy to light a stick everyday and get rid of my auto spray thing in that room?

Also, are there any eco friendly ways to deodorise the inside of a car?

I would be interested re insence aswell. I tend to burn alot of insence sticks.

Incense can also be made with synthetic fragrances so I think you'd have to look into what you were buying.

What about essential oils (as opposed to fragrance oils or anything called anything else oil which are likely synthetic)? You can get prepared blends or make your own combinations. Put a 4 or 5 drops in some water in either a specially designed burner or diffuser or bowl on top of the radiator/woodburner etc...

You can also use EOs in the car by putting a few drops on cotton wool and then wedging that into your heating/air vent thingies.

Zeolite soaks up smells. So does carbon fabric.

Baking soda is worth a try, and costs less.

I use a UV light air purifier from http://www.airoasis.com/

I also use HEPA air filters with a carbon screen.

Clean has no smell. Using smells to cover up smells can compound problems, esp. when both categories of smells come from mold, fungus, or petroleum-based products.

I also use an oil burner with essential oils, but I suppose, (due to cost) the insence is cheaper than buying oils, so I use insence more often. I will have to be more careful what I am buying. Thanks for that info......... I am such a novice at all this!

I have very mild asthma - insense sticks make me cough and cough and cough.. so i would not use them myself.. and i cant go in shops with it burning either.. just info

re commercial air freshners? should be banned....imho...

Forgot to post that some have had good results with using cut-up apples in a bag in the car. They soak up whatever unpleasant smells are in the car. Then you can put the apples in the compost.

I left on open bag of potato chips/crisps in the car this summer. I had had a can of gasoline/petrol leak in the trunk. The smell had gotten into the inside of the car. Most of the smell went into the bag of potato chips. Nice to have the smell out of the car, but it cost a nice bag of chips.

I had already done all the usual cleaning, washing the inside of the car with castile soap. Rinsing the carpets with vinegar, and putting them in the sun. Doing all this several times. All that helped. But, it took the bag of chips to get the rest of the smell out. I thought it was odd and slightly amusing.

Flour shaker full of bicarb with either dried lavender buds and rosemary leaves, or a few drops of EOs of your choice. Homemade shake'n'vac. Shake on carpet, leave 15-30 mins and vacuum. Marvellous.

Green Aura wrote:Flour shaker full of bicarb with either dried lavender buds and rosemary leaves, or a few drops of EOs of your choice. Homemade shake'n'vac. Shake on carpet, leave 15-30 mins and vacuum. Marvellous.

I've done that, both in the car, and in the house. Had to leave it in the car for days, a cat had sneaked in.

Bicarb is great to get rid of any smells, it even gets rid of cigarette smells which are the trickiest to get rid of! It hangs about for days!

LBR wrote:Forgot to post that some have had good results with using cut-up apples in a bag in the car. They soak up whatever unpleasant smells are in the car. Then you can put the apples in the compost.

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Thanks for that, I will give that a try when I get home tonight! Anything is worth a try!

To be honest, I would be wanting to know what's making my dogs smell rather than trying to cover up their odour.

No offense intended, but we have had 2-4 dogs of various breeds and mixes living in the house for the last 20 years, and the house doesn't smell doggy unless they come in soaking wet.

We feed them a BARF type diet, with both raw and cooked meat and rice cooked in whey or broth as their grain. If they smell, I know something's not quite right with them.

FWIW,
Andrea
NZ

You can get good quality, natural, fair trade incense, often for the same price as the synthetic, nasty trade ones.

I wanted some cinnamon incense sticks one year and could only find them in one particular brand. I can't remember the brand name, but it sounded natural so I gave it a go. Boy did they give me a headache! And they smelled more like melting plastic than the cinnamon I was hoping for. After that I only bought incense from the fair trade shop in town, and if they didn't have the fragrance I wanted, I did without.

Devonshire is a good brand, and they'll ship:

http://www.incense.net/

Its handmade by the couple that own the business, and it smells heavenly!

farmerdrea wrote:To be honest, I would be wanting to know what's making my dogs smell rather than trying to cover up their odour.

No offense intended, but we have had 2-4 dogs of various breeds and mixes living in the house for the last 20 years, and the house doesn't smell doggy unless they come in soaking wet.

We feed them a BARF type diet, with both raw and cooked meat and rice cooked in whey or broth as their grain. If they smell, I know something's not quite right with them.

FWIW,
Andrea
NZ

Hi Andrea,

Similarly our dogs only smell (to us) if they have been outside in the wet; and they don't smell to my mum as she is another dog owner. However (and perhaps I am being a little over sensitive here) I am concious of non-dog owners and think if they visit does the house smell 'doggy'? You know how if you are a non-smoker you can smell smoke instantly? I'm just trying to account for all house users.

On another matter, I've removed all air freshers from the car and replaced them with cotton wool soaked in Rosemary oil... The car smells blissful! Thank you for whoever gave me that tip!

Perhaps I am too oversensitive to smells (it's probably a conditioning of watching too many air freshener commercials or something) maybe I should chill out and just see what real smells are like!