Stop spending a small fortune on commercial air fresheners! Not only can the costs add up quickly, but they are filled with chemicals that are bad for your and aerosols that are bad for the environment! Try these awesome homemade air freshener recipes to keep your RV smelling fresh! It’ll save you money and give you peace of mind that you’re doing something good for the environment!
Simmer Pots
Perhaps the easiest of all the homemade air fresheners we’re including, the simmer pot is a practically effortless way to freshen your RV! This is basically potpourri that you boil! Start off by filling a saucepan with water and bringing it to a boil on your range. Add the desired ingredients which can include fruit peels, cloves, cinnamon sticks, vanilla, or any other extract, coffee beans, and so much more! This air freshener idea may not be the best idea if you don’t have a large LP capacity, but you can always use your campfire to get the water boiling! Just be sure to keep the flame low, and add more water to your simmer pot when needed!
DIY Reed Diffuser
Instead of stopping by Target every few months for a new reed diffuser, gather up some supplies and make your own! For the price of a few reed diffusers, you’ll be able to get all the ingredients you’ll need to keep supplied for well over a year! You’ll need:
- Small glass bottle or bud vase
- About 5-10 bamboo skewers (use rattan diffusing sticks for more scent)
- Essential oils of choosing
- Any quality carrier oil or baby oil
Fill the glass bottle with anywhere from 15-25 drops of your essential oils (or however much you want), then fill the rest of the bottle with a carrier oil like sweet almond oil, safflower oil, or even baby oil if you don’t want to spend the money on more expensive oils. Place the skewers in your mixture, and you’ll be ale to smell the beautiful scents within an hour or so!
Potpourri
Joke all you want, but potpourri isn’t just for old ladies! It’s the perfect way to keep your RV smelling fresh! It’s actually a wonderful way to provide freshness on your camping adventures, as you can use items you find on nature walks like flowers, pine sprigs, fruit, and more along with herbs from your garden at home! Use items such as cinnamon sticks, cloves, citrus slices, ginger, lavender, wildflowers, herbs, pine cones, and anything else you’d like for the perfect scent!
Mix with a complementing essential oil scent and bake at 200 degrees for two hours, or until the ingredients are brittle but not burnt. From there, you can set potpourri in a dish on your RV’s counter or dinette, or place in satchel bags and use them to freshen wardrobes or drawers!
Room Spray
Commercial air fresheners are incredibly guilty of being filled with chemicals, and tend to come in aerosol cans, which can be responsible for ozone depletion. Opt for a natural DIY version that will make you and the earth feel much better! Get these ingredients together:
- Medium-sized spray bottle
- 2 Tbsp. rubbing alcohol/vodka/vanilla extract (to kill bacteria) -OR- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ¾ C. water
- Essential oils of choice
For an alcohol-based spray, combine about 15-20 drops of essential oils and alcohol of choice in your spray bottle, then add water, shake well, and use as needed! If you’d like to use baking soda, combine baking soda and five to six drops of essential oils and mix thoroughly. Add this mixture to a spray bottle, then fill with water, shake, and spray!
DIY Scented Oil Refills
If you’re camping with electrical hookups, a scented oil plugin can work wonders for your confined RV space! The downside is that they’re costly to replace, and filled with those pesky chemicals! Never fear! Once you’ve used up your current cartridge, save it! You can make your own refill oil that is natural, smells great, and is super simple! You’ll need:
- Empty scented oil cartridge
- Essential oil of choice
- Carrier oil of choice
- Butter knife or leveraging object
Use knife to pry off the top plastic part of the cartridge. Once loosened, remove the plastic piece with the wick, then rinse out the cartridge. Fill the container with about 40-50 drops of essential oil, then fill the rest with your carrier oil. Replace the plastic and wick back into place. Put the cartridge into the plugin, and now your RV will smell like your favorite essential oil!
DIY Febreze
Odors can definitely stick around in fabrics, especially when you’re camping! Instead of paying an arm and a leg for Febreze, use this simple recipe to make your own fabric refreshing spray! Sure, it’s not necessarily an air freshener, and it doesn’t use all-natural ingredients, but it’ll affect the air quality by eliminating fabric smells! It only requires these three ingredients:
- 1 ½ C. water
- 1 Tbsp. baking soda
- 1-2 Tbsp. scented fabric softener
- Large spray bottle
First, add the water to the spray bottle, then add the baking soda and fabric softener, shake well to combine, then spray onto smelly fabrics! Test a small area of fabric first to make sure the spray doesn’t leave a residue. White vinegar may be substituted for baking soda to prevent this!
Travel With a Plant
Aside from being something pretty to look at, plants can be a fantastic way to help reduce some funky odors that may be hanging around your RV! Although they may not eliminate odors altogether, stick one or two in your RV along with any of these other air fresheners to keep the air clean! Some great species to include in your RV include:
Golden pathos—This cool plant eliminates carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and benzene in the air, and helps to reduce the effects of exhaust fumes!
Lavender—These plants are compact and smell great! Remember to cut off dead buds, as this stimulates the plant to produce more! Save the dried buds to use for potpourri or a simmer pot!
Mint—A popular scent for the home, mint is also a great plant to keep around! Not only will the fragrance improve the smell of the air, but you can use the leaves for cooking, teas, cocktails, and they’re the perfect size to keep in an RV!
What do you think of these awesome homemade air freshener recipes to keep your RV smelling fresh? Your camper will smell less like dirty, sweaty adventurers and last night’s potatoes and sausage and more like a meadow or a delightful bakery! Have any other great DIY air freshener recipes? Leave us a comment to share!
