Making your home smell good can get expensive. All of the candles, incense, and diffusers add up quickly.
You don’t have to empty your wallet in order to have a good-smelling home. Especially if you’ve recently acquired a personal home loan to buy your very first house! In this article I’ve listed eleven inexpensive ways that you can make your home smell great.
Before You Make Your House Smell Amazing
Before we dive into the list, there are a couple things that can help you reduce the amount of odors in your home before covering them up with a nice fragrance.
Prepare to Make Your House Smell Amazing
One of the first things to consider when trying to make your home smell good is cleanliness. This may go without saying but keeping your house clean is the first step towards having a house that smells amazing. All of the smell-good tips in the world won’t mean a thing if the source of your house odors haven’t been cleaned.
It might help to clean and disinfect in cycles. Cleaning floors on a certain day of the week, walls once a month, dishes daily, and so on. Of course you might need to clean up accidents in between the scheduled days, but having a schedule can make a huge difference in preventing the accumulation of bad odors.
Another source of bad odor in the home could be from pets. If you have pets, be sure to read this article about the best air fresheners and deodorizers for pet odor.
11 Cheapest Ways To Make Your House Smell Amazing
Now let’s get to the fun stuff. Here are eleven inexpensive ways to may your house smell like home:
1. Simmer Fruit & Spices on the Stove
The first suggestion that comes to mind for me is to pull some spices out of your cabinet along with whatever fruit you have on hand, and allow them to simmer on your stove.
If you have cinnamon sticks and apples, lemons, or oranges, this would make a great combination.
Start by filling a medium to large-sized pot with water, and heat it up. Next, drop in a few cinnamon sticks. If you don’t have any, you can sprinkle ground cinnamon into the pot. Next, slice up your fruit. You can completely fill the pot for stronger fragrance or place a handful of slices on top for subtle fragrance.
Gently place them in the pot as well.
At this point you can add more spices, like cloves, or anise, and then allow them all to simmer for thirty minutes or more.
Keeping the heat low will prevent rapid evaporation. But make sure you are nearby so that the water doesn’t fully evaporate, creating a fire hazard.
If this scent combination doesn’t appeal to you, you can try herbs, like lavender or rosemary along with the lemon slices.
2. Make Your Own Potpourri
On a related note, how about making your own potpourri. If you have dried flowers and essential oils already on hand, this is an inexpensive option.
Drop your dried flower heads, leaves, or herbs into a glass container. Next, open a bottle of your favorite essential oil fragrance and pour drops of it onto the dried botanicals.
Be sure to avoid getting the oil on your hand! Place the bowl in a central location of the room and enjoy the fragrance.
Alternatively, you can place the dried herbs and flowers in small cotton bags, add a few drops of essential oils, and then strategically hang the bags in various places throughout your home.
If you don’t have any dried flowers, try using tea bags. Hanging them in small spaces would have the greatest impact.
3. Use Coffee Beans
If you love the smell of coffee, you can either brew a fresh pot, or simply pour coffee beans into a bowl and your house will almost instantly smell amazing.
You can even take it a step further by burrowing a tea light in the beans, but making sure not to let it sink too deep. Once the tea light is nestled into the bowl, light it. The warmth will carry the scent of the coffee beans even further.
To take it up another notch. You can use flavored coffee beans – like French vanilla or hazelnut. Or you can use unflavored coffee beans and pair them with a scented tea light. Almond or vanilla mingling with coffee beans would smell divine!
And how great is this if you dislike drinking coffee but love the way it smells? Win-win!
4. What About Scented Craft Supplies?
For all of you DIY-ers out there, I know you have felt squares or wood slices on hand, right?
Consider dropping essential oils on these supplies, and then hang them as if they’re sachets or cedar wood for closets, or those air freshener trees.
If there isn’t already a string, use a needle to thread the felt squares. If your wood slices are thin enough, and you have the proper tools, you can punch out a small hole and then pull through some string or twine. Pre-drilled wood would be best, though.
If you have a larger slick of wood, you might have to place it on the floor of the closet or in the corner of the room for it to release its scent.
The difference here is that you’ll know exactly what’s been used to create the fragrance.
5. Try Fragranced Rice
Pour rice into a small bowl. Next, pour a few drops of essential oil onto the rice. Place this bowl in whatever area of your home needs freshening, and you’ll be surprised how well your rice will disseminate fragrance in that area.
If you don’t have any essential oils on hand, pre-fragranced rice, that can work too. Place Jasmine or Basmati rice in a bowl and allow its fragrance to fill the room.
6. Make Your Own Odor Absorbers
Pull out whatever citrus fruit you have on hand – lemons, limes, oranges – whatever you have.
Next, slice them in half. Use a spoon or some other kitchen utensil to remove the pulp. Or, if you have one of those juicers that will keep the rind intact, you can juice them and then use the juice for a different project. Do whatever you need to do to safely hollow out the halves.
Grab your sea salt and pour salt into each half until each one is full. If you want, you can place mint or lavender herbs on top of the salt. Spices like cloves or broken cinnamon sticks would work as well as drops of essential oils.
Gently place your DIY odor absorbers in any area of your home that needs freshening.
I would caution against putting them in places where they might topple over. It may help to put each half into a small bowl, place cheesecloth on top, and then put a rubber band or string around the cloth to hold it in place. This can prevent spillage.
7. Repurpose Dryer Sheets
If you have dryer sheets on hand, you can repurpose them to freshen up small spaces. I place them in closet corners and drawers to keep clothes smelling clean.
8. Slice Up Some Apples
Have you ever noticed that apples absorb the odors of whatever is closest to them? If you allow apples to ripen in the same area where your onions are located, I promise you that when you go to eat one of those apples, they will have an onion flavor. I learned this the hard way.
But you can use my life lesson to your advantage. If you slice apples and place those slices near an odor source in your home, the apple will absorb the odor at a very low cost.
9. Fragrance Your Light Bulbs
Starting with a cool lightbulb that is turned off, apply a few drops of your favorite essential oil using a cotton ball or Q-tip. The next time you use this lightbulb, its warmth will cause fragrance from the oils to be dispersed around the room. Cool, eh?
Try a relaxing or comforting scent, like lavender, amber, or vanilla.
TIP: It might be best to use low-wattage light bulbs for this, just to stay on the safe side.
10. Use Incense Instead of Large Candles
If you aren’t opposed to light smoke in your home, then consider burning incense.
Even well made incense can be less expensive than a good candle. My favorite daily incense is Moss Garden by Shoyeido. It has very low smoke content and has a pretty low asking price considering its quality. There are 35 sticks, which can easily be broken in half for shorter burn time.
Morningstar incense by Nippon Kodo is also reasonably priced.
11. Use Smaller Scented Candles
If you enjoy more expensive ways of making your house smell great, try doing those things on a smaller scale if you want to be budget-conscious.
Smaller candles don’t burn for as many hours as larger candles, but they can still inexpensively fill your home with lovely fragrance.
Less pricey quality candles exist. For instance, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day candles in small tins are made with healthy ingredients, usually cost less than $5 USD, and burn for about 12 hours.
Even WoodWick has a small candle under $10 USD. This petite, luxurious candle burns for up to 8 hours.
Final Words
Did you find this list useful? I hope there are at least a couple things from this list that you can try at home. There are a few more tips, like adding essential oils to your filters, in this post.
Choosing to limit your smell-good purchases can actually help you to enjoy the fragrant experiences even more because you’re no longer thinking about the cost. Using what you have on hand can also simply be a relief when you don’t have time to get to the store or need a quick solution before an online order arrives.
If you found this article helpful, be sure to share with someone else who might benefit from reading it!