How to Get Rid of Weed Smell in Your Home

There’s no place like home (to smoke weed). One of the best parts of being a grownup is the ability to light up in the comfort of your own abode. Lots of folks enjoy blanketing their place with that comforting aroma. Even for the headiest of heads, though, there are times when you want (or need) to get rid of the weed odor in your home. 

It bears repeating: if you want to avoid big deodorization moves, you should spray Veil after you smoke to get rid of the weed smell. We’re not here to Monday-morning-quarterback ya, though. If your place is reeking of the devil’s lettuce from many Veil-less sessions, there are 5 areas you gotta attack: Air, Furniture, Rugs/Carpet, Floors, and Walls/Ceilings.

Air

The stanky air in your home is an obvious place to start, as this is probably where the majority of your weed odor is living. To clear the air, you wanna keep two things in mind: circulate + absorb. 

This isn’t rocket science. If you want to get rid of odors in the existing air, the logical first step is to bring in some fresh air. Open all the windows you possibly can and crank up whatever fans you have around — ideally you have some windows on at least two sides of your home so you can get some cross ventilation going. The absolute ideal setup for maximum new air circulation is as follows:

On one side of your home, open the available windows and place a fan pointing inward in front of one window. On the other side of your home, open those windows too, but place a second fan facing out a window. 

The last and oft-overlooked aspect of air circulation in your home, for those who are lucky enough to have central heat/air, is your air filter(s). According to the so-called experts, surely in the pocket of Big Air Filter, you’re supposed to change your air filters every 60-90 days. If you’re anything like us, you’re just now learning that you may have something called an air filter and that you should have changed it three or four times already this year. These things trap all sorts of particles like dust, mold, and dander that are constantly floating around your home. All those pesky particles can have rank smells themselves, but they can also hold onto the odor from your cannabis smoke. 

The above begs the question: what kind of moneybags have two fans on-hand, let alone central air?! As minuscule Brooklyn apartment-dwellers ourselves, we certainly don’t have either. Which brings us to the second aspect of air de-skunking: absorption. 

There are many substances that, when left out and uncovered, will essentially absorb the odor in your environment. Absorb is a bit of an oversimplification, as the science of how each of these household items deodorizes varies quite a bit:

• Baking soda – most (bad) smells tend to be acidic in nature, so baking soda, which is naturally alkaline, acts as a pH neutralizer. One of the oldest household tricks in the book is to leave a box of baking soda open in your fridge to keep it from funking up. While this might work OK in a small, confined space like your fridge, for larger, open spaces, you really want to spread the baking soda out in a thin layer to maximize it’s odor absorption powers. Let it sit for up to a few hours, then vacuum it all up.?
  
  
• Coffee – spreading out coffee grounds (like baking soda) can also absorb the weed smells in your atmosphere. You can thank your other favorite drug, caffeine, for this — caffeine is rich in nitrogen, which chemically combats a wide array of stank.
  
  
• White Vinegar –  lots of folks despise the scent of vinegar, but depending on why you’re trying to get rid of your marijuana odor, you might not be so concerned with that. Leaving some white vinegar out in an open container will help some, but simmering it on your stovetop will really crank up its odor removal powers. Simmer the vinegar vaporizes its acetic acid, which then bonds with the molecules responsible for the weed smell.
  
  
• Activated charcoal – definitely the most expensive option on this list, and also the one you’re least likely to have laying around the house. That said, you can get decent prices on activated charcoal by buying it as loose granules (rather than more expensive pre-packaged products) and then putting it in a porous fabric like muslin, cheesecloth, pantyhouse, etc. The ‘activated’ in activated charcoal means that it’s been infused with more oxygen, which makes it more porous — giving it more surface area to absorb your marijuana odor.

Furniture

Let’s start with the obvious: if you spill some bong water on your coffee table or accidentally ash on an arm rest, those mishaps are gonna make your place smell like weed. Even if you’ve been racking up days-since-last-accident in your home, just the smell from your smoking habit can become ingrained in your furniture.

Start off by dusting everything – dust particles just mean more stuff for that pesky odor to cling to. Furniture that is made of a hard or synthetic material – wood, metal, plastic – is all going to be pretty easy to clean. Just use soapy water and wipe it down thoroughly. Bonus points for bringing in an additional cleaning agent after you’ve done your wipe down to really lock-in that clean smell. And make sure you use a cleaning agent that is formulated for whatever material you’re cleaning, so as to avoid any degradation of your furniture.

That was the easy stuff, now let’s talk fabric. Fabric is pro-level, go-to-school-and-get-a-masters-in-cleaning type stuff. But that’s why we’re here. Best case is if your fabric furniture has a layer that can be removed, then run through the wash. For fabric furniture that can’t be machine washed, try applying baking soda, leaving it for a day, then vacuuming that off. 

A couple of other fabric furniture cleaning options, for your consideration: The first, a homemade solution of dishwashing liquid, water, white vinegar, and baking soda (easy on those last two components). Dip an absorbent rag or sponge into the solution and gently blot smelly areas.

The second, and our preferred method, is a wonderful, beautifully scented, spray called Veil. Spray liberally over – or directly on – fabric furniture. It’s colorless and non-toxic, so you don’t have to worry about it negatively affecting your furniture. We recommend spraying over the course of a couple of days to really let the fragrance sink into your furniture and mask the smell of smoke. We recommend pairing Veil with one, or multiples, of the solutions we mentioned above – especially the baking soda technique. 

Carpets / Rugs

Just like with your furniture, your carpets and rugs can hold a lot of odor. Start by vacuuming everything thoroughly – this will catch any bits of lint, dust, ash, or dirt that could also hold odor (or be producing odors of their own).

After a healthy vacuum, try applying a cleaning solution to any particularly perniciously odorous sections of carpet. We’ve had a lot of success with Nature’s Miracle. Technically a product for cleaning up “pet messes,” but also extremely effective at knocking out odor. Nature’s Miracle is also an all-purpose disinfectant, which is especially relevant right now.

For smaller area rugs, the washing machine is always an option. Just remember to hang dry as most rugs were not sewn with the intention of being run through a dryer. Big rugs and carpets can also be sent out and dry cleaned or steamed. This will likely run you upwards of $100, but is certainly worth it for a surface that may seem beyond reproach. There are a number of companies who do only rug cleaning (Stanley Steemer, anyone?) and they’re dang good at it.

If you prefer a more natural approach to cleaning, our homemade solution of dishwashing liquid, water, white vinegar, and baking soda works just as well on rugs as it does on fabric. Dip an absorbent rag or sponge into the solution and gently blot smelly areas.

Floors

Let’s pick up where we left off with rugs: Our homemade, dishwashing liquid and vinegar-based solution! This works especially well on hardwood and stone flooring. Rather than using a sponge or rag, grab a mop and go to town. After you’ve mopped the floor with a wet mop, run it back with a dry mop to finish the job. Then, if you want sparkling clean AND completely odorless floors, we would recommend closing things out with a few spritzes of Endust. It’s definitely a product of Big Cleaning, but boy does it work.

A good ol’ fashioned mopping, regardless of your preferred cleaning solution, will always do wonders on a floor – whether hardwood, stone, or synthetic. Products like Pine-Sol and Fabuloso are cheap, come in bulk, and actually don’t smell half bad. Once again, Big Cleaning – but, typically, general opacity of chemical formulation and product efficacy are negatively correlated; so take your pick.

To that end, some start-up and direct-to-consumer brands have been popping up recently promising the effectiveness of the big, legacy brands with fewer nebulous chemicals and sketchy corporate fundamentals. Blueland is one of our favorites. Their product is effective and smells great, not to mention made without parabens, phosphates, and other esoterica. Their subscription service also makes for easy re-ups!

Walls / Windows / Ceilings

If you’ve made a regular habit of smoking in your home, then it’s likely that the walls, ceilings, and windows have all absorbed the weed smell as well — so we’re going to need to clean them too. Again, we’d like to take a brief moment to remind you that you can avoid all this hard work by making Veil a part of your session routine. A spritz of Veil in time saves nine… hours of scrubbing every surface of your home to get rid of marijuana odor. That’s the end of this edition of shameless self-promotion, now back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

That homemade concoction of water, dishwashing liquid, and white vinegar that we used for  our furniture, carpets, and floors will work just as well on getting the weed smell out of your walls, ceilings, windows, and window sills. Be careful, though, if you have wallpaper, as this mostly harmless solution may not be tolerated by some wallpapers. To avoid destroying your wallpaper, test the solution first on a small, lesser-seen section of the wall (like behind a piece of furniture) to make sure it’s not going to be an issue.

It’s probably overkill in most cases, but the completionist in us requires that we inform you that odor-defending paint is a thing you can buy in 2020. Perhaps you’ve been hotboxing your apartment continuously since the Bush administration, we’re not here to judge (no matter which Bush administration). Smoking weed or cigarettes continuously in a super confined area can not only cause the cannabis odor to become ingrained in the walls, it can also cause discoloration of the walls as well. You may have seen a yellow accent on the ceilings of some particularly divey bars in your day. That authentic look is hard-earned from years of patrons’ chain smoking. 

If you look up from your screen right now and see some discoloration on your wall or ceiling, no amount of scrubbing is going to totally solve your problem — you’re gonna need a fresh coat of paint. Odor-defending paint, like the aptly named OdorDefender brand, is specifically designed to seal in whatever smells your stanky walls are already emitting + block the walls from absorbing more odor and discoloration.

Our honest take: a coat of odor-defending paint might make sense if you’re a landlord or homeowner looking to remove and prevent weed smells from accumulating in your property once and for all. It’s not cheap, though, so in most cases a good scrubbing + a fresh coat of regular ass paint should be sufficient to get rid of your marijuana odor.

Cabinets / Drawers

Sure it’s 2020, but you probably still don’t want your stash of bud out in the open for all to see. Any self-respecting pothead has some sorta designated drawer or cabinet for her substances and paraphernalia. Wherever you choose to store your weed, it’s possible for the odor of the yet-to-be-smoked flower to seep into that small environment. Because it’s usually not finished on the inside as it is on the outside, the porous wood in your cabinets and drawers absorbs smells incredibly easily.

First things first: get yourself a decent stash jar or container that’s airtight and smell proof. Not  only is this going to prevent the raw weed smell from accumulating, it’s going to protect your precious nugs from drying out or molding. You’re going to want to avoid anything plastic, as it’s porous so it’ll let the smells out and let air in, slowly draining your weed of potency. There are lots of fancy jars on the market that are specifically made to keep your stash fresh and contain the smell, but we swear by a simple glass jar with a hinged, airtight lid. They’re affordable and easily found at a variety of general stores or kitchen supply shops. Keep in mind, though, that UV rays can degrade your bud, so if your container isn’t opaque, you’re going to want to keep it in a dark place… hence the drawer or cabinet.

Assuming you’ve got your storage sorted, you still might have some weed smell to get rid of in your drawers or cabinets. Either your previously-subpar stash situation caused the odor to seep in, or more likely, you’ve been smoking in the vicinity of these storage areas of your home. These small, enclosed spaces are the perfect use case for baking soda, coffee grounds, or activated charcoal. Sprinkle one of those substances in your drawer or cabinet and let sit for a few hours, then vacuum it up. Alternatively, you can pace an open container of baking soda in these spaces for ongoing odor absorption.