How to Remove the Dog Smell From Your Home
“Do you smell that?”
“It smells like a mixture of a wet dog and bad breath…”
Don’t catch yourself saying this about your home. Instead, do something about your pet odor-filled home!
Removing Hair From the Furniture
In a home with pets, the furniture is always covered with hair. To tackle this problem, start by removing all of the pillows, cushions, and blankets. Now you can grab the vacuum and begin sucking up the hair on your home’s couches, recliners, beds, etc.
Don’t be shy with the vacuum either, switch up attachments so you can get into as many crevices as you can. You can then move onto the cushions and pillows by going over them with the vacuum before placing them back onto their respective furniture (and going over them with a lint roller can get any strands of hair you might’ve missed).
- Bonus Tip: We know you love cuddling with your dog or cat on the couch, but try to keep your pets off of the furniture to avoid the spread of their dander, hair, and possible accidents they may have.
Removing Hair From the Floor
Once the furniture has been taken care of, it’s time to worry about the floors. Whether you have a hard surface floor or carpet, one thing remains the same — move furniture around so you can remove the bundles of hair and dust underneath (AKA dust bunnies).
For homeowners with wood or tile floors, a thorough sweep followed up by a quick mopping will do the trick. Everyone else with carpeting will need to break out their vacuum again.
When vacuuming the carpet, make sure you pass through the same area multiple times. Not everything is going to be picked up in a single pass-through. Go over the same area with the vacuum three to four times before moving on.
Removing Odors From Your Home
Now that most of the hair and pet dander have been removed from your floors and furniture, it’s time to focus on the leftover odors.
- Linens and Clothes – To remove pet odors from your linens and clothes, add a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar and oxy powered laundry detergent to your washing machine and then run your usual wash cycle.
- Floors and Furniture – Even though you just vacuumed your floors and furniture, go ahead and sprinkle baking soda on everything — yes, everything. Baking soda does a phenomenal job at absorbing odors. Allow the baking soda to do its job for a few hours (overnight if you can) and then vacuum up all of the baking soda.
- Pet-Stained Carpets – For homeowners with pets that continuously urinate on the carpet, baking soda might not do the trick. In this case, you may want to have your carpets professionally cleaned or rent a carpet cleaner. A good shampoo and a pass-through with a cleaning machine will certainly leave your carpets odor-free!
- Ductwork – Once the house is finally free of most pet hair, dander, and odors, you shouldn’t have that dog hair smell anymore. However, it’s still possible if you have a forced air HVAC system. Why? Because the ductwork running through your home can become filled with pet hair and dander; and as air is pushed through, the odor and dust will come out of the vents into the air you breathe.
Having a dog is great. Having a cat is great. But having a home that stinks because of your pet — that’s not so great.
When your home is in need of air quality improvement, know that our pros here at Lancaster PHCE can handle that for you. No more foul odors AND no more low indoor air quality. Talk about a win-win!
