Okay, so let me tell you about this perfume smell situation I had. It was driving me nuts. Someone, let’s just say, went a bit overboard with the spray in my car, and man, it lingered. Not the good kind of lingering, either. It was just too much. Had to get it sorted.
First Thing I Tried: Airing It Out
My first thought was simple enough. Perfume’s mostly alcohol, right? And alcohol evaporates. So I figured, maybe heat and air would do the trick. I left the car windows cracked open for a day, hoping the sun and breeze would just carry the smell away. Did it help? A little bit, maybe? But honestly, the smell was still pretty strong, especially when the car was closed up again. It faded the top notes, perhaps, but that heavy base smell was stuck.
Next Up: Baking Soda Attack
So, airing it out wasn’t the magic bullet. I remembered reading somewhere, or maybe my grandma told me, that baking soda is good for smells. Like, you put it in the fridge, yeah? So I thought, why not try it in the car.
- I grabbed a box of baking soda. The cheap stuff, nothing fancy.
- I sprinkled it lightly on the carpets and the floor mats. Was a bit worried about the seats, so I just stuck to the floor areas first.
- I also poured some into a couple of small bowls and just left them sitting on the floor overnight.
The next morning, I vacuumed up all the sprinkled baking soda really well. Sniff test… okay, noticeably better! The baking soda definitely absorbed some of that stink. It wasn’t completely gone, but it was a big improvement. Way less overpowering.
The Vinegar Experiment
It was better, but still not perfect. I could still catch whiffs of it. I needed something stronger for whatever was left. Then I thought about vinegar. White vinegar. It stinks too, but in a different way, and the vinegar smell usually disappears and takes other smells with it. Or so I hoped.
So, I poured some plain white vinegar into a bowl. Just a regular cereal bowl. Placed it on the passenger side floor, making sure it wouldn’t tip over. Closed up the car windows and doors and left it overnight again. Yeah, the car smelled like a salad for a bit when I opened it the next day. Not gonna lie. But I took the bowl out, opened the windows again for maybe an hour while I drove around doing errands.
What Finally Worked
Here’s the deal: The baking soda did a good job cutting down the main punch of the perfume. Then, the vinegar seemed to neutralize that lingering, stubborn bit that the baking soda didn’t quite get. After airing out the vinegar smell, the perfume was basically gone. Like, really gone. I couldn’t smell it anymore.
So for me, it was kind of a two-step process. Baking soda first to soak up the worst of it from the fabrics, then the bowl of vinegar to zap the rest out of the air and whatever else it was clinging to. Took a couple of days and a bit of effort vacuuming and dealing with the vinegar smell temporarily, but it worked. Finally got rid of that headache-inducing perfume cloud.
