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Ah, yet another successful switch! I’m loving making all of these changes from commercial products to more natural ones. It’s actually been kind of fun finding or coming up with recipes for all these products. This post is about our switch from Febreze Air Effects air freshener to my homemade air freshener. What we’re using now isn’t 100% natural, but it is a lot better than the aerosol stuff as far as I can tell.
Here’s the breakdown:
| Ingredients: Febreze Air Effects Spring Renewal Air Freshener: Nitrogen, Purified water, Alcohol, Hydrogenated castor oil, Dialkyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate, Polyacrylate, Hydrochloric Acid, Benzisothiazolinone, perfume blend, Cyclodextrin (Other undisclosed chemicals) | Ingredients: Homemade Air Freshener: Water, Isopropyl Alcohol, apple cider vinegar, scented oil |
| Price: Febreze Air Effects Spring Renewal Air Freshener: $2.99 ($0.31/oz.) | Price: Homemade Air Freshener: $0.48 ($0.06/oz.) |
Wow, that was the most annoying breakdown I’ve done yet. Apparently Febreze really doesn’t want people knowing what’s in their product. What I listed is what’s on their site’s official PDF, but according to the Environmental Working Group there are more than 80 chemicals in Febreze. And to think I’ve been spraying that shit around my house for years. I should have known better, but we all get our wake-up call eventually. Recently the Febreze started making me cough and making my throat feel rough any time I sprayed it. I decided them that it was time for a change.
To be honest, I was skeptical of a homemade air freshener. The men in this house can be pretty stinky (and yeah, even me from time to time) and I wasn’t sure something homemade could work. Well, we’ve been using this mix for about a week now and we have no complaints. The recipe is super simple. It’s a 50/50 mix of water and rubbing alcohol (I use the same 90% alcohol that I use for cleaning my piercings and jewelry.) with 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar and 10 drops of scented oil. I used orange oil for ours because it’s one that I already have on hand. The spritz bottle I got at the dollar store takes a few pumps before you get a spray out, but hey, it was only $1.00.
It takes only a spray or two to kill just about any odor. The scent of the spray lasts for a few minutes then dissipates and the air just smells like nothing. I like that it doesn’t linger for a long time. It has never made me cough or hurt my throat, and I accidentally breathed in a spray of it a few days ago. The spray also works to get rid of cooking smells. I think the stuff is pretty good, and a hell of a lot cheaper than the commercial stuff at a savings of about $2.40 per 9.7 oz. The floor does get a little damp because it’s a liquid rather than an aerosol, but it’s something that we can live with.
