Eliminate Smelly Odors From Your Drawers With Two Items From Your Kitchen

You likely store all sorts of items in the drawers throughout your home. Your kitchen drawers may contain utensils, coffee supplies, spices, and seasonings. You might keep socks, shirts, perfumes, or body care products in the drawers of your bedroom dresser. Drawers get little airflow, so any odor emitted from these items can lead to stubborn smells that are hard to get rid of. There is a simple solution that will help you eliminate these smells using two items you probably already have in your kitchen — bread and vinegar.

It might seem strange, but this odor absorption method is recommended across the internet. All you need is a bowl, a slice of white bread, and vinegar. First, lay the slice of white bread at the bottom of your bowl. Next, pour in enough vinegar to soak the break, and let it sit inside the closed drawer for 24 hours. After removing the bowl the following morning, you should notice that the vinegar-soaked bread absorbed all the bad smells in your drawer.

Even cleaning experts rely on this vinegar and bread hack to get drawers smelling fresh again. Author Linda Cobb, who is also known as the "Queen of Clean" shared how she carries out this method in her book, "The Queen of Clean: Clean Like the Queen." "Smells in old trunks and drawers can be eliminated with a slice of white bread placed in a bowl and covered with white vinegar," the book reads. "Close the trunk or drawer for 24 hours, and when you remove the bread and vinegar the odor will be gone!"

Cobb also shared a YouTube video showing just how simple this hack is. She recommends using the vinegar and bread method to combat musty or moldy smells in kitchen drawers. Cobb pours ½ cup of vinegar into a bowl that contains a slice of white bread. The author also made it clear that you must use white bread in order for this odor control hack to be effective, though she doesn't explain exactly why.

Although using vinegar and bread to control odor in smelly drawers throughout your home may seem off-putting at first, keep in mind that this is a safer method for those with sensitivities to harsh fragrances. Unlike strong and overpowering air fresheners, vinegar will not leave a harsh fragrance lingering in your drawer. You should expect the vinegar smell to remain in your drawer for only about one hour. This hack is also ideal for kitchen drawers that contain food items that may become toxic if they come into contact with harsh chemicals, like those found in many odor-eliminating products.

This vinegar and bread method is not only safer for your health, but it is also better for the environment. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in traditional cleaning solutions can harm air quality, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, a study published in Chemosphere (via Science Direct) revealed that products containing fragrance emit more VOCs than those that do not. Unfortunately, many air freshening products are heavily fragranced. With this in mind, those seeking environmentally friendly odor-eliminating products might prefer vinegar as an alternative.