Everyone loves petrichor—the attractive smell of the first rain hitting the soil. But it’s hard to romanticise the monsoon when it’s been raining for days on end, and that musty smell enters your home and…just stays.
Tips to Keep Your Home Fresh During Monsoons
Here are some quick tips on how to keep your home smelling fresh through the season, so you can kick back and look out the window with a steaming cuppa and truly enjoy the short reprieve from the heat.
Air It Out
This is the easiest and most natural way to keep unpleasant odours from taking over your house. Open up all the windows during the day and let fresh air flow through; if you can create cross-ventilation, that’s a great way to balance the humidity. Speed up the fan for a bit for the best results. In the kitchen, don’t forget to use the exhaust fan after every cook so the air gets carried out.
Investment Plan
If there are two things you should spend on, it’s a dehumidifier and screen shutters for your windows. The dehumidifier for obvious reasons; the screen shutters because you’re going to want to keep the windows open as much as possible, but monsoon guests include mosquitoes, moths, worms, and a host of other bugs and flying insects. Not only are they gross, but they can also bring in disease/allergies and cause damage to your furniture and soft furnishings.
Use Lighter Furnishings
Plush bed covers, carpets, and rugs, heavy curtains…you might want to consider putting these away for a few months because not only are they difficult to clean and dry in this season, they also lock that musty smell in for ages. Safer bets include lighter fabrics, cotton bed covers, sheer curtains, dhurries over carpets…stuff that’s more convenient to wash out and dry regularly so everything smells fresh. If you have a pet, don’t forget to regularly clean their beds too.
Essential Oils
Light a scented candle or use essential oils from the citrus family in your vapouriser/oil burner to fill your rooms with pleasant aromas. Cedarwood, lemon oil, grapefruit, wild orange, peppermint, and bergamot are all fresh, mood-lifting smells; lavender comes with the bonus of also being relaxing. Save the heavier scent profiles for the winter months. You can experiment with the intensity of the smell (4-10 drops of oil in water), but limit the burning to 30-60 minutes a day so it doesn’t get overwhelming and have the opposite effect of what you were trying to achieve. (Say no to chemical air-freshener aerosols, they’re horrible for you.)
Closed Spaces
If you’re a coffee person, you’re already stocked with a great solution: a bowl of coffee beans or freshly ground coffee in your cupboard; or place your favourite soap wrapped in a muslin cloth. Ventilate your bathroom by drying up the floor as soon as you’ve showered, and using the exhaust fan for a short period, and keep your drains clean at all times; a mix of vinegar and baking soda is a great odour-neutraliser. In the kitchen, a cup of vinegar will absorb the cooking smells. Pack your shoe rack with silica gel packets.
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