The consequences of smoking pot indoors

January 31, 2019 6:50 AM

I'd like to smoke pot inside my house, but I don't want my house/bedroom to always smell like pot. Are there devices that actually work for limiting it, like air purifiers? What about carpets/curtains/etc? Do they absorb the scent? Or am I being overly concerned?

- I own my house, and it is no secret that I smoke pot. I just don't want it to be super apparent when someone walks in my house, the way it is super apparent when someone regularly smokes cigarettes indoors.
- I have a venmar/air exchanger for the entire house, so the smell wouldn't be limited to the room it is smoked in.
- I have a tenant living in my basement. She also is a pot smoker, but it is stipulated in her rental agreement that smoking indoors isn't allowed (which she is fine with). I don't want to flaunt the fact that I am smoking indoors when she cannot.
- I know I could open a window, but it is -22 Celcius right now, so that is a big bag of nope for a lot of the year.
- I have heard that pot smoke doesn't stick to surfaces and linger the same way cigarette smoke does, but I assume there must be some level of persistence, especially considering there is an area rug, fabric curtains, and blankets etc. in the room I wish to do the majority of my smoking in.



Do small air purifiers do anything? I was looking at THIS ONE but I'm unclear if it will actually make a difference.
What about the little personal air purifiers, like smoke buddy - are they worthwhile?
Would having a bunch of houseplants in the room help?
Any other suggestions?

posted by PuppetMcSockerson to Home & Garden (20 answers total)

Here’s a list of sploofs of various levels of cost / construction difficulty. I’m told the basic “cardboard tube filled with dryer sheets” works pretty well.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 6:53 AM on January 31, 2019

You might try vaping instead, if you have access to that product. It leaves no trace of pot smell.
posted by joan_holloway at 7:00 AM on January 31, 2019 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: I have a vaporizer and yeah, no smell. But I prefer smoking joints, and that is what I am trying to accomplish.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 7:04 AM on January 31, 2019

Get a vape pen! No lingering smell whatsoever. (Get your tenant one too)
posted by cakelite at 7:04 AM on January 31, 2019

Sorry, just saw your response. Weed is pretty smelly, but I think as long as you’re not smoking constantly and are more of an “a few hits while I watch True Detective” person, it might not linger.
posted by cakelite at 7:11 AM on January 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

Anecdotal, but, I seriously cannot stand the smell of pot, and I dated a guy for 4 years who smoked it, and not once did his house ever smell like pot except when someone was actively smoking it. Nothing like cigarette smoke at all.
posted by JanetLand at 7:45 AM on January 31, 2019 [12 favorites]

If a vape pen is absolutely out of the question (which really solves this almost 100%) you can try making a "sploof" like college students living in dorms do...basically just exhaling through a cardboard tube with a generous amount of dryer sheets shoved inside to capture some of the smoke. It's imperfect but in combination with some Ozium should solve for lingering pot smells.
posted by windbox at 7:55 AM on January 31, 2019

Yeah unless you are smoking a TON and leaving your weed out to the open air you almost certainly won’t have lingering pot smell. Storing in a sealed mason jar when not in use should do the trick nicely. As for sploofs, the Smoke Buddy (available on Amazon for like $12) works great.
posted by forkisbetter at 8:03 AM on January 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

Here in Toronto (where it’s -30 with windchill today), my SO wears his parka and blows smoke out the window for two minutes. I also hate the smell and it doesn’t seem to stick around. (Unless I’m habituated to it, but I am super sensitive to it, so I don’t think so.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:15 AM on January 31, 2019

The smell dissipates pretty fast out of the air and out of clothes, BUT the resin/oils linger forever on anything that is used to contain / dispense / smoke / process your dope.

The goal to have a skunk-free house as a smoker has two components: 1) completely contain resin funk through air-tight storage of all pot and pot-related accessories, and 2) make sure that resins in the smoke don't condense onto anything inside the house either. (This is why bongs get super funky; the resins in the smoke condense on the cooler surfaces. And as you probably know, you can't clean them off with soap, you need 90% isopropyl alcohol.)

If you have a bathroom with an exhaust fan, that will get rid of most of the smoke, HOWEVER you will get some condensation on the fan blades and exhaust ductwork. After many months this will probably become noticeable during hotter weather, but probably only in your bathroom.

The only way to not build up residual skunk is to smoke outside or, yeah, blow smoke out the window. (And yeah, if you're a smoker, you probably won't notice the smell as much. )

My daughter has a table-top vapouriser and we ask her to use it on the balcony, which she is good enough to do even in the cold. All the gear and weed lives in a rubbermaid tote on the balcony so it can't funk up the apartment. A couple minutes sitting outside can get pretty chilly, but bundled up and warm from a toasty 22C inside is not going to really get that onerous.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:21 AM on January 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

You mentioned joints and that's basically the one method of weed smoking that does have a lingering and noticeable smell. Pipe/bong/vape basically can all be pretty much undetectable within hours after smoking, like, invite-a-cop-to-your-living-room gone. Joints though, because of the burning paper, plus the burning of resins soaked into the paper as it goes, will make for a much stronger smell and a lingering burned resiny-rolling paper smell for over a day.

More anecdotes, I lived in my buddy's house for a year, smoked everyday in that room, and I went into it recently after moving out and it's basically like a brand new room, would not be able to tell I ever occupied the place.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:48 AM on January 31, 2019

If you live in an apartment building or condo, please, PLEASE do not use your bathroom fan to get rid of the smoke. One of our neighbors smokes a lot of weed, and uses their bathroom fan to disperse the smoke, and that means that our bathroom frequently reeks of weed, even though we do not smoke it at all. (I assume that their fan is venting out in the vicinity of where ours vents out, and thus the smell is finding its way into our condo.)

That said, we bought this air purifier to try to combat the smell, and it does a great job.
posted by sarcasticah at 9:00 AM on January 31, 2019 [4 favorites]

I understand the appeal of joints/ bongs, and you have a vape pen - is it for oils/ concentrates or can it do dry flower?

I cannot recommend the Pax 3 highly enough; it's a dried flower vapourizer and since getting it I've only used my bong a couple of times. It's a little pricey, but definitely worth it.

Would recommend getting a good grinder, though. For consuming smaller amounts, use the included "half cap."
posted by porpoise at 10:13 AM on January 31, 2019

Oh, forgot to mention - the scentless febreeze actually works. It doesn't mask odours - the active ingredient is a cyclic dextran that bind volatile organic compounds and render them inert.
posted by porpoise at 10:15 AM on January 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

The smell dissipates pretty fast out of the air and out of clothes

I'm another person who haaaaaaaaates the smell of pot, and anecdotally I don't agree at all, based on the number of times I've had trouble breathing on the Metro because of people on the train who reek of pot. (I support legalization! Anyone who wants to use it should have it!) Unless literally every one of those people has stepped out from hotboxing a car into a train, I would say that in my experience it lingers, especially in hair and fabric.

I also have to assume that your tenant will be able to smell it, bc people smoking near my building has always filled my apartment with the smell, let alone people smoking in the building with a shared HVAC system. Landlord privileges and all, but I doubt she won't know.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:46 AM on January 31, 2019 [4 favorites]

One tip is to put the remnants of your joint into some sort of sealed container, because in my experience it's the roach/pipe/dottle that really smells the place up.

I've had less success with spray solutions (except Febreeze), but I have a left over HEPA air filter/cleaner that works wonders.
posted by Sphinx at 12:06 PM on January 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

I no longer smoke but used the little one hit "bats" for stealthy smoking. No smoke escapes going into your lungs. Hold it long enough, and not much comes out.
(well, until they take half your L lung out b/c cancer)
posted by rudd135 at 6:15 PM on January 31, 2019

Just to clarify, my recommendation for vaping is for vape pens and not a vaporizer device. I've found with a good pen I get a much better/well controlled high than smoking weed, and it's less harsh on the lungs.
posted by joan_holloway at 8:04 PM on January 31, 2019

Before I switched to a vape pen, I blew the smoke up the flue of the wall mounted gas heater. A chimney would also work as long as there's the draft carrying things up and out the roof.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:48 PM on January 31, 2019

Does your range have a hood? The vent over that seems like the obvious place where I’d put any indoor smoke.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:01 AM on February 1, 2019