Keep Your House Smelling Fresh Using These Natural Room Scents

Apart from sanitizing and disinfecting your home, it’s also important to keep it smelling fresh. Since you’ll be staying indoors more often, you’d want to eliminate bad odors, improve air quality, and lessen air pollutants. You may not realize it, but indoor pollution can have a big impact on your family’s health, making respiratory symptoms like cough, colds, and allergies, worse.

DIY natural room scents using herbs and spices

An easy remedy is to buy chemical-free air fresheners at the supermarket, but making your own is also simple enough. You can use the ingredients you use for cooking, like fruits, herbs, and spices, as natural room scents for your home by creating a stove top scent. According to TheYummyLife.com, as you simmer the ingredients in water, the steam will fill the air with a subtle, pleasant smell.

What you’ll need

1. Citrus fruits like lemon, lime, and oranges (calamansi may work, too!)
2. Herbs like rosemary, thyme, and mint
3. Spices like cinnamon and cloves
4. Water
5. Pot
6. Jars

How it works

Cut fruits into thin slices. If you prefer, you can also use just the peels. Combine the ingredients into a pot, cover with enough water and bring to a boil. Then, lower the heat and let it simmer.

Here are some stove top scent recipes that you can try:

1. Lime, mint, and ginger

Love the smell of mojitos? The mint kicks up the aroma up a notch while the ginger offers a lovely twist.

2. Orange, cinnamon, and cloves

The fruity scent is wonderful and has staying power. You can reheat it several times to keep your room smelling pleasant for a number of days.

3. Lemon and rosemary

This gives off a lovely, fresh scent. You can also add vanilla extract to the mixture for a stronger aroma.

A caveat: Stove top fragrances will scent your kitchen and spread to other rooms, but it will depend on the size and layout of your house. You’ll also need to keep an eye on the pot so the water doesn’t dry out. If it does, you’ll smell burnt citrus and herbs instead.

The good news is you can reuse and reheat these scents a number of times. Just put all ingredients inside a jar after use, let it cool, and refrigerate. 

If you want to take the scents off the stove and inside individual rooms, you can use a mug warmer, candle warmer, or tea pot warmer to keep the water hot and release the scents. Remember: more heat and steam means a stronger scent. You can also use it as a spray! Just make sure to let the ingredients sit in the water for a few days before using. 

This story originally appeared on Smartparenting.com.ph.

* Minor edits have been made by the Realliving.com.ph editors.