No one likes kitchen smells (apart from the cockroaches) – especially while entertaining friends and family. Cooking odours, and other smells that may have lingered from the dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal, sink and the trash/recycle/compost area can be annoying and downright embarrassing if you have company coming over. Let’s get busy with a few things you can do right now to not only neutralise kitchen odours but create a pleasant and inviting atmosphere with welcoming scents in the kitchen and surrounding areas.
Here are six super simple things you can do to remove kitchen odours before you start cooking or incorporate these into your daily kitchen cleaning routine to prevent unpleasant odours from wafting around in your kitchen. These can be fun things to teach your kids to do as well – give them one or two of the items on this list and teach them how to keep a clean smelling kitchen!
- Feed lemons to your garbage disposal on a regular basis
Cut a few slices of lemon to send down the garbage disposal to take care of those nasty kitchen smells. The cleansing power of citric acid will break up the gunk and grease causing the unpleasant odour and will create a pleasant lemony scent.
- Keep your sponges, towels, and kitchen rags clean and dry
Kitchen smells are everywhere! Put your wet sponges in the dishwasher on a daily basis to keep them clean. Use freshly washed kitchen towels and rags every day or two. With kitchen rags that are usually placed near the sink or on a rack, be sure you rinse them really well each time you use them, and you can even place them in the dishwasher with the sponges!
- Use white vinegar before, during and after cooking
White vinegar is a miracle worker to neutralise kitchen odours. Set out small bowls of vinegar before, during, and after cooking. Vinegar will absorb and remove kitchen odours, so let the bowls sit out while you cook and then for a few additional hours (or overnight, for stubborn smells) before dumping out the liquid. You can also try simmering water and vinegar or apple cider vinegar in a saucepan to speed up the process. Add one tablespoon of vinegar to one cup of water for about 20 to 30 minutes.
- Keep the exhaust fan running while cooking
Before you begin cooking, start the fan to help clear the air. Leave it on while cooking and even afterwards. Keeping your kitchen air circulating is an important step to eliminate kitchen odours.
- Simmer a pot of apples, vanilla, lemon, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg (ginger optional).
Try this recipe any day and any season! It cleans the air, helps to eliminate kitchen odours on a daily basis and adds a nice scent to the air for when your family and friends pop over:
- 3-4 cups of water
- 1 red apple cut into small slices
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 2 slices of a real lemon
- 2 cinnamon sticks or 1 tea bag of caffeine-free cinnamon tea
- 3 or 4 cloves
- A dash of nutmeg
- A very small amount of ground ginger (optional)
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The eternal Australian problem, how to keep the cockroaches out of your draws, your cupboards, your dishwasher, your taps, your everything that has a nook and cranny to it! The tips above will help them away as they do love a good smelly kitchen. However, they do like more than a smelly sauce or a stinky shelf, they love crumbs and even an odour free kitchen has crumbs.
So we recommend using a bait. Just adding a little blob of gel or bait to the cracks in your cupboards can keep these pesky critters at bay. A good one to look for is Combat, you can find it in the insect spray isle of your local supermarket. Cockroaches eat it and take the poison back to their nest getting rid of the whole problem for good, leaving your kitchen odour and roach free!
We hope our tips on how to eliminate kitchen odours have inspired you and don’t forget to check out our other household organizing tips such as food storing in the kitchen, how to organize your home, and setting the table for any occasion. Make sure you register with Ask Team Clean to get more advice and rewards sent to you!