Keep Your Shoe Storage Cabinet Smelling Fresh With A Common Kitchen Ingredient

Scented candles, diffusers, DIY linen sprays: Your home is filled with enticing and uplifting scents that elevate your space and make everyone who enters it feel good. So when you notice a smell that is anything other than nice, you likely immediately want to handle it. After all, why spend so much time and energy cleaning, spraying, diffusing, and airing out spots just to catch a whiff of something stomach-turning? In this case, it might be shoes that are adding a stench to a particular room or space, and if you've struggled to keep smelly footwear at bay, a common kitchen ingredient could be your new staple for deodorizing. Baking soda, which can be used for everything from deodorizing a smelly dryer to banishing laundry odors, can also combat stinky shoes that reside in a storage cabinet.

Baking soda is an alkaline, so it works wonders at eliminating bad odors. Not only does the powder neutralize the bacteria that creates off-putting scents in your shoes, it also helps to get pH levels back to normal. When these levels are unbalanced, they create funky-smelling footwear, so baking soda is the ideal product to help keep your storage cabinets smelling fresh ... or at least less stinky.

There are different ways you can try this hack, and sprinkling the powder directly inside your shoes is a simple choice that quickly affects the problem. However, while this will save you a little time, getting all of the powder back out can prove tricky sometimes, and could create a bigger mess than you want. Cleaning up baking powder isn't too difficult, as it can be wiped up with a cloth or vacuumed without harm to your machine. But why waste energy cleaning up when you can create a deodorizer with other items you have around the house?

Instead of pouring baking soda directly into the heels of your shoes, add some to a fresh, unused coffee filter to create a sachet. Tie the edges with a rubber band or some string, or simply twist to keep the sachet closed. Place one inside each of your shoes, pushing them down under the tongue so they can reach more of the inner parts and help control smells. Leave these sachets in your shoes after they've been worn and when they are in a storage cabinet, swapping them out for fresh ones whenever you notice odors again.

The great part of trying baking soda hacks is that there are few wrong ways to introduce them. For your shoes, you can upgrade the powder by adding it along with a few drops of essential oils to a sock you no longer plan to use. This sock can then be inserted into your shoe and left overnight. The baking soda will deodorize, while the oils will add a preferred scent that could make footwear, and your storage cabinet, smell even better after each use.

Scents like tea tree, citrus, and eucalyptus are ideal for this DIY. Tea tree will work with the baking soda as an antiseptic to get rid of bacteria, and eucalyptus also has antibacterial properties that contribute to the fight against odors. Citrus is great for neutralizing off-putting scents, so any of these, combined with your kitchen staple, will leave your shoe cabinet smelling fresh. Follow up with a baking soda room spray to keep your home naturally odor-free without a ton of effort or stress!