Stink be gone

August 6, 2007 10:14 AM

Help me get the stink out of my storage space...naturally, please

Last year, my grandmother died, and I was left to clean up her place and put stuff in storage. The place was incredibly dusty and stinky in a stale, older person, no air circulation, unidentified smelly smell, possibly mold kind of way. This storage has now been moved to our new home, in the above ground basement. The same place is also going to double as my office space. Even if it weren't my office, I'd still want the stink gone. There are some things I want to keep, and some not. So, giving it all away is not an option for me.

Anyhow, now the basement is stinky. How do I get rid of this smell? How do I clean it off the things I want to keep (clothes, books, trinkets)? I'm pretty sensitive to chemical type cleaners and would like to know about natural methods to make the stink go. Essential oils? Granny funkdefier? Sage?

Thanks.

posted by healthyliving to home & garden (12 comments total)

Boil some white vinegar. It will smell awful while it's heated but when it cools down, the vinegar scent vanishes and also takes away the other scents.
posted by jamaro at 10:22 AM on August 6, 2007

Warm water and a microfiber cloth, to start with, and then dry well. Get the dust off the stuff. Then you can probably identify which things have really absorbed the smell rather than being coated with it. For those things, bowls of white vinegar set in the vicinity of the stink will help (works best in enclosed places like drawers and cabinets, but just putting some out in the room should help some).

Sunshine is the best possible option, if you're able to put things outside to bake in it.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:23 AM on August 6, 2007

Here are some good suggestions.
posted by amro at 10:24 AM on August 6, 2007

Wash what you can, obviously. Store the cleaned clothes in a separate area until you're done with the rest of the job to prevent cross-contamination. A few extra minutes in the dryer are good insurance that they won't be left damp when stored again.

After cleaning as Lyn said, and using the sun's UV rays to kill as many odor-causing bacteria as you can, I think moisture is your main enemy. Find ways to drive it out, and store things in plastic bags with desiccant so it can't keep decaying.

Desiccant is expensive at retail, though sometimes the sporting-goods stores have decent prices in the gun-safe section. You might be able to get some just by knocking on doors in the local industrial park -- my old employer used to throw 5-pound bags away because they came in every Fujitsu shipment and we had no use for them. Reactivate them (drive off the absorbed moisture) by baking at 200 F for 20-30 hours in an electric oven. (Water from the flame of a gas oven makes it perfectly useless as a dryer.)

After all this cleaning work, much of the funk-dust will likely be in the carpet. Rent a good water-extraction carpet cleaner, shampoo the floor twice, and let it dry with plenty of fans for 2 or 3 days before stacking stuff on it again. (If *everything* is on pallets or shelves, less drying time might be okay.)

Then and only then, cover up the remaining smell with mint or sage, or some other smelly hobby like model glue, paint, solder, etc...
posted by Myself at 10:59 AM on August 6, 2007

Thanks everyone. That's really helpful.
posted by healthyliving at 11:00 AM on August 6, 2007

Seconding burning a sage stick. It's really really good. I'm not very new age-y but it does seem to positively affect the energy in the air as well as the smell.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:09 AM on August 6, 2007

Watch burning the sage stick. My co-worker thought she could make the room smell better and "cleanse the bad energy" from the place. She ended up stinking up the place and setting off the smoke alarms (everyone had to leave the building).
posted by nimsey lou at 11:13 AM on August 6, 2007

If it is a dank / moisture smell, spreading a bunch of cedar chips may help. We have some storage units in the basement that was very humid and mildew smelling (and infested with some of the largest spiders and centipedes I've seen outside of a zoo!). We ran the chips along the perimeter and let them soak up the moisture. We replaced them a month later or so. It doesn't solve the cause of the problem (like some of the above solutions), but it might help cover up some of the Hard To Solve issues that linger.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 11:31 AM on August 6, 2007

If you want something to make the room smell "pretty", you could consider these "bath bombs" from LUSH. They have a variety of scents, and the scent can really fill a room. Just leave one somewhere in the room and it will help scent the room.

LUSH is a company that emphasizes using natural ingredients, few, if any, preservatives, and doesn't test on animals.

Of course, this suggestion is only if you want to scent the room, not just remove a stink. If you're not into a scent, this won't be the solution for you. :o)
posted by leticia at 1:13 PM on August 6, 2007

This will only work if you like/can tolerate the smell of coffee.

Buy some cheap whole coffee beans. You can either 1) put the beans in a 1/2 inch layer in a shallow cardboard box, or 2) get a mesh bag with very small holes, fill it with beans, and tie up the top of the bag so you have a coffee bean sachet. (The leg of a pair of nylons works well, too.) Put the sachet or box in any enclosed smelly space; after a day or two, the coffee beans should have absorbed a lot of the stinky odours.

I have used this to good effect with an SO's sports shoes that were so bad I thought I was going to pass out from the stench. He had tried everything on them to no effect. I actually ended up just pouring the coffee beans in the shoes directly and leaving them for two days. After I emptied the beans out of the shoes, they were miraculously stink-free!

I also had a co-worker whose brand new fridge/freezer unit had been accidentally unplugged while she was on holidays; the salmon in her freezer had gone rotten and the stink infested the whole fridge. She tried all sorts of cleaning products but nothing seemed to remove the smell. She thought she was going to have to get rid of the fridge, but as a last-ditch effort she spread baking trays with whole coffee beans and put them on the fridge and freezer shelves. She left them there for a few days and afterwards reported that the smell was gone!

/breathless testimonials
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:32 PM on August 6, 2007

I've never understood the whole burning sage indoors thing. It has its own very strong scent, and will just mask the problem with (depending on your nose) a stink of its own.
posted by canine epigram at 1:56 PM on August 6, 2007

I was going to suggest coffee too, but not whole beans. Just get a can or a brick of whatever cheapo ground you can find at your supermarket. Pour it into a couple bowls and distribute them around the space. If it still smells in a week, repeat with another pound of coffee.

This took all the musty smell out of a long-stored cabinet for me.
posted by bink at 2:04 PM on August 6, 2007