Everyone has entered a pet-friendly home at some point and thought, “Pee-uw, it stinks in here!” Oily, dirty dogs, cats with lingering fishy smells, cough-inducing kitty litter reeking of ammonia, and everyone’s favorite – carpets that have been peed on too many times without a proper cleaning!
Does your house smell like pet odor? If so, how can you effectively remove the offending smells without removing your pets?
A clean, fresh-smelling house without the overbearing chemical scents of many cleaners is possible. It does, however, require some preplanning, the right supplies, and a bit of elbow grease!
The First Step in Removing Pet Odors from Your Home
This is the surprise step that few pet owners think about when discussing removing pet odor from their surroundings: the health of their pet. If your pet has a medical condition that is causing the smell, how can you expect to get your house to smell clean and fresh?
Conditions like incontinence, urinary tract infections, infected anal glands, chronic diarrhea, ear infections, lip fold dermatitis, leaking lumps, and blocked male cats all have one thing in common—they all create unpleasant odors. Before you spend your valuable time and hard-earned money cleaning the house, ensure that your pet doesn’t have a treatable medical condition causing the malodors. Otherwise, it will be all for naught!
The Easy Clean-Ups!
One of the simplest ways to remove pet odor from your house is to regularly wash your pet’s bedding and anything else they may sleep on. If your pet has a favorite spot on the couch or your bed, cover it with a sheet or washable blanket to make cleanup easier. Bedding, your bedding, curtains, pillows, slipcovers, throw rugs, and your pet’s bed are all washable—take advantage of the washing machine and keep the fabrics in your house clean and fur-free.
Secrets to clean, odor-free fabrics? Add baking soda to the wash, avoid machine drying the fabrics, and if an offensive odor lingers, use a pet waste enzyme neutralizer available at most pet stores.
Dirty kitty litter is another easy-to-remove stench. Cats prefer a clean litter box, so use clumping litter and clean it daily. If the litter box is old and scratched, consider replacing it and cleaning the old one for recycling. Protect the new box by ensuring the litter is deep enough and the box is cleaned regularly.
Removing Pet Odors from Carpet
Pets and carpets are like kids and playgrounds: all about serious play and covering as much ground as possible! Both dogs and cats love to explore, learning the feel of new carpet and sniffing out all the new smells. Along with these smells, sometimes comes “marking” behavior. While this is normal, it’s no longer socially acceptable in our modern, often antiseptic world.
To clean the smell, you first need to locate it. Feces are easy to find, but dried urine can hide in dark carpets. Your options? Get on your hands and knees for a serious nose workout, or purchase a black light from your local hardware store. Black lights make bodily fluids fluoresce, making it easier to spot stains. A word of caution: black lights show every bodily fluid stain, so be prepared for “too much information”—an old carpet can tell quite a story, possibly one better left unheard!
If the accident is fresh and your carpet has a stain-resistant coating, gently place a paper towel over the wet spot and allow moisture to soak up without applying too much pressure. Excess pressure will push the liquid deeper into the carpet fibers. Once the pooling liquid is absorbed, apply pressure to clean up the remaining dregs.
To Shampoo or Not to Shampoo
The jury is still out on how effective regular steam cleaning is for your carpet. Harsh chemicals can break down carpet fibers, shortening their lifespan. However, unpleasant stains and odors will also reduce the lifespan of your carpet. Spot cleaning with a high-quality carpet cleaner and pet odor neutralizer should be the first step in maintaining your carpet’s freshness.
If spot cleaning doesn’t help combat pet odors, hire a professional carpet cleaner to tackle the problem. Experts in this field know how to remove pet stains and odors without over-cleaning and damaging fibers. Replacing wall-to-wall carpet is a huge investment, so it’s worth protecting by hiring professionals to help maintain it.
Is one area of the carpet worse than the rest? Sections of carpet can often be replaced if they are too worn or stained. Have a private carpet layer come into your home to offer suggestions on how to replace damaged areas and provide an estimate for the work.
Paint – The Last Resort to Removing Pet Odor
As surprising as it sounds, long-term, strong odors can be absorbed by paint. This is especially true for urine, whether from a tomcat spraying the walls or a stinky kitty litter box sitting in a small room for too long.
The easiest solution? Repaint. Paint can help seal in bad odors, giving your house a new, cleaner scent. Odorless and odor-removing paints are now available, making them perfect for homes with multiple pets and kids!
Removing pet odors from your home takes some effort. The most important step, however, is ensuring that your pet is healthy and happy, followed by removing the scent and possibly retraining.
A clean, fresh, pet-odor-free house is possible—even if your home sometimes feels like a zoo!
