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Hard-hitting Alternatives Needed

After opening up the truck doors to my Father’s Chevy farm vehicle, the suppressing and triumphant chemical + dog smells exuding through the orifices of its openings almost knocked me over for dead. After a night of eco-friendly odour blockers, the smell of Febreze remained stubbornly intermingled with the sickly smell of wet dog. Time for more plotting with further research. I’ve been reading about the powers of diatomaceous earth (herein known as DE) + clay as being huge odour sponges. I’m particularly fascinated by the multi-purpose function of DE, in both animal and human existence. Way to get sidetracked from a smelly job at hand. After several hours of much scrutiny over DE’s benefits and claims, I returned to the task of vacuuming up the previous night’s baking soda ash cover from the cushion covers. A very time-consuming task indeed. Because of this, I was hesitant to spread kitty litter / baking soda / borax mixture anew on the cushions, but for now, it was the next best option. Surprisingly, I had a small quantity of DE tucked away for other purposes (it remains poised for eliminating ants, bed begs or other hard-shelled pests) for those ‘just in case’ moments. Now would be an ideal time to test out DE. So without following any real recipe, I threw together a handful of the cat litter and borax, several boxes of baking soda with a couple of heaping tablespoons of DE. When using DE, it’s vital that only Food-grade diatomaceous earth aka fossil shell flour be used. Even with wearing a dust mask and safety glasses — protecting myself from inhaling the fine dust residue and particulates — I could still taste the soda and borax ash mixture. Luckily I wore gloves (I’m not wanting to mess with a potentially caustic recipe: borax can do that) when spreading the mixture on all seated surfaces. The doors were left open all day in an attempt to air things out. Let’s hope that these tricks help to eliminate some of the odour. I’d be foolish to think it could annihilate the horrific stench. Next up: finding a quality charcoal odour absorber, using an enzyme cleaner with a steam cleaning bath to follow (if the current concoction doesn’t fumigate or at least ‘sweeten’ the air ).

Do you sweet reader have any ideas or suggestions for me? Any experience and/or success with eliminating stubborn odours that you’d care to share? Any enzyme cleaner recommendations? Any bad experiences worthy of contributing?

Say NO to Febreze!!!!!! 

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