All houses have odors.
Houses with Pet Odors will NOT SELL!
I don’t want to offend fellow pet owners, but when SELLING a HOUSE – you need to be reminded that pets come with odors. You may have become used to them, but they are immediately noticeable to virtually ANYBODY new to your house. Not just those with more finely tuned olfactory senses.
DOGS. For dog owners, keep the dog outdoors as much as possible, even those adorable lovable little lap dogs. You might also try sprinkling carpet freshener on the carpet on a periodic basis.
CATS. Odor problems with dogs is not as severe as cats. Dogs are generally allowed outside or escorted outdoors for their constitutional trips. Indoor-only cats come with those stinky litter boxes! For those with cats, be sure to empty kitty litter boxes daily and use plenty of baking soda.
HUMANS. For those who smoke, you MUST eliminate smoking indoors while trying to sell your home. If you have been an indoor smoker – your house reeks of cigarettes! You won’t smell it – but non-smoking Buyers will run for the hills! You need to read: House Selling 101: How to Get Rid of Cigarette Smell.
Who ME...?
Has your pet left “scent marks” of urination on your floor or furniture?
In order to successfully sell your house you are going to have to get rid of these deal-killing smells. If you are not completely successful, your pets will return to the scene of the crime and add to it!
Find all soiled areas using your nose and eyes. A black-light bulb ( Home Depot, Lowe’s, or online) will usually show even old urine stains. Turn out all lights in the room; use the black-light to identify soiled areas and lightly outline the areas with chalk or baking soda.
Clean the soiled areas appropriately to remove the odors. Even if you can’t smell traces of urine, your pet can. Your most important chore is to completely remove (neutralize) that odor.
CLEANING METHODS TO AVOID
You should avoid using steam cleaners to clean urine odors from carpeting or furniture upholstery. The heat of the cleaning process will permanently lock-in the odor and the stain by bonding the urine proteins into any man-made fibers. Likewise, you should also avoid using standard cleaning chemicals, especially those with strong odors, such as ammonia or vinegar. From your pet’s vantage-point, this will just annoy them and might actually encourage your pet to reinforce the urine scent mark in that area.
HOW TO DE-ODOR SMALL RUGS and REMOVABLE CUSHION COVERS
Machine wash small rugs and removable cushion or pillow cases. Add a one pound box of baking soda to your regular detergent. If possible, it’s best to air dry these items out-of-doors (i.e. do not add HEAT).
Use Enzymatic Cleaners!
If you can still see the stain or smell the urine, machine wash the item again and add an enzymatic cleaner. Be sure to follow the directions carefully. If you cannot locate enzymatic cleaners at your supermarket or pet store you will find dozens of products at NexTag or Amazon or Jeffers. While ordering the Enzymatic Cleaner also order a quart or gallon of Odor Neutralizer (more on this below). Most of these products can arrive on your doorstep for under $25 including shipping costs.
HOW TO CLEAN CARPET and UPHOLSTERY
Soak up as much of the urine as possible with using newspaper and paper towels. The more fresh urine you can remove before it dries —especially from carpet— the simpler it will be to remove the odor.
Rinse the “accident zone” with clean, cool water. After rinsing, remove as much of the water as possible by blotting or by using a “wet-vac.”
If you’ve previously used common household cleaners or chemicals of any kind on the area, then neutralizing cleaners won’t be effective until you’ve rinsed every trace of the old cleaner from the carpet or upholstery. Even if you haven’t used chemicals recently, any trace of a non-protein-based substance will weaken the effect of the enzymatic cleaner. The enzymatic cleaner will use up its “energy” on the old cleaners instead of on the protein stains you want removed.
Rent a carpet extractor!
Wet-Vac or Carpet Extractor: So then, in order to remove all traces of old chemicals and clean old or heavy stains in carpeting, consider renting an extractor or wet-vac from a local hardware store or even most large supermarkets. The extractors operates much like a vacuum cleaner except that they have a fresh water tank and a sprayer on the vacuum head. These are efficient and economical to rent.
These easily-rented Carpet and Upholstery Extractors do the best job of forcing clean water through your carpet or upholstery and then sucking-up the dirty, protein-laden water out again.
When using these machines or cleaners, be sure to follow the instructions carefully. When dealing with biological odors (proteins), don’t use any chemicals with these machines (cleaning chemicals that the rental places want to sell you) –they work much more effectively with plain water.
Effective Odor Remover
Once the area is really clean, you should use a high-quality pet odor neutralizer available at pet supply stores, NexTag or Amazon or Jeffers Discount Pet Supplies. Read and follow the instructions.
If the area still looks stained after it’s completely dry and odor-free from these proper extracting and neutralizing methods – then you can try any good carpet stain remover.
If urine has soaked down into the padding underneath your carpet -or worse- saturated the wood sub-floor, your job will be more difficult. You may need to remove and replace that portion of the carpet and padding. When the carpet is removed – treat with enzymatic odor eliminators.
