How to Keep Your Clothes Closet Smelling Summer Fresh all Year
CLOTHING CARE TIPS
One of the best things about the arrival of summer is the ability to open the windows and air out your house. However, closets often don’t get the benefit of fresh air and sunshine. A lack of windows and the tendency to keep closet doors closed can lead to musty, stale smells. If anything in your closet smells bad, the scent can permeate all of the clothes.
Take a look at some tips that will help you keep your closet smelling fresh and clean year-round.
Clean It Out
Start by giving your closet a good cleaning. You’ll want to make sure that you get rid of any bad scents, not just cover them up. What’s more, a good airing out will often eliminate the odor of stale air.
While you’re cleaning out the closet, look for any signs of mold or moisture. If you have a water problem of any kind in your closet, you’ll need to find the source of the moisture and dry it up if you want to keep your closet smelling clean. Once your closet is clean and dry, you can work on adding in new fresh scents.
Reuse Your Old Dryer Sheets
If you love the way your clothes smell when they come out of the dryer, you can bring that scent into your closet by reusing your old dryer sheets. After drying, the sheets still have some scent to them – enough to help revitalize the air inside your closet.
Tuck them into the corners of shelves or into the pockets of clothing you don’t wear very often, like winter coats. You can even stick some inside of shoes that you don’t take out of the closet much. Just remember to occasionally replace the dryer sheets with ones that have newly been through the dryer because they’ll lose their scent over time.
Older Air Fresheners or Potpourri
Do you have a car air freshener that seems to have lost its scent or some decorative potpourri that no longer seems to add scent to the living room? These items lose their scent over time, but in a small, enclosed space that doesn’t get much airflow, they can still liven up the scent.
When you notice that your air fresheners or potpourri decorations are no longer providing much scent in your car or in large airy rooms, just move them into your closets. This is a good way to get the most out of these items while keeping your closet smelling clean.
Coffee Grounds
Want a little pick-me-up while you’re choosing your clothes in the morning? You might be surprised to learn that coffee grounds absorb bad odors. They can prevent the musty smells of mothballs from taking over your closet. Plus, they have that great coffee smell.
Just find a small container with a lid into which you can poke some holes. Fill the container with coffee grounds, put the lid on, and stick it in a corner or on a shelf where it won’t be in the way. Replace the old grounds with new ones once a month or so to maintain the energizing coffee scent.