How to Make Your Bathroom Smell Good All the Time {the 5 Best Ways!}

I’m not one to keep my bathrooms shiny and spotless because I HATE cleaning bathrooms with a passion!

I will happily wash an unlimited amount of dishes, wash mountains of laundry, and mop all the floors…..but bathrooms??!!

YUCK!!

The reason I don’t like getting intimate with my bathrooms (the smell) is precisely the reason I want them to smell fresh all the time. LOL what a dilemma! 

I don’t know if I’m smart or lazy (maybe a little bit of both?), but at any rate, I’ve figured out some little tricks over the years to keep my bathroom smelling really good without having to try too hard OR get my hands very dirty! 🙂 

By doing these things to make my bathroom cleaner throughout the week, I find that my bathrooms are in pretty good shape year round. 

Getting the results I want and not even working that hard?

Yes, please!

It’s not as hard as you think to have a good smelling bathroom most of the time but it does take a little bit of strategy!

I Never Want to Freak Out Again When Someone Stops By…

It is a great feeling to KNOW that your bathrooms (especially any bathroom a guest might use) are pretty clean all the time.

The last thing you want when someone pops over to your house is worry about whether or not there are sticky pee stains under the toilet seat or the lingering scent of poop in your powder room! 

Before I started using these simple bathroom hacks, I remember that I used to freak out a little bit on the inside whenever somebody was at my house.

I’d either run straight to the bathroom and do a 60-second lightning cleaning session right when they were pulling into the driveway OR I’d find an excuse like right after they arrived to “go to the bathroom” so I could at least wipe underneath the toilet seat!

I didn’t want them to see the shameful situation I had on hand!

I know I’m not the only one who has ever done this! :/

It’s so embarassing to have a dirty bathroom…so I’ll do ANYTHING to make sure they’re pretty clean for others. 

The best part about being a little obsessed with having a clean bathroom is that I finally figured out how to also MAKE IT SMELL GOOD ALL THE TIME. 

Not a small feat, but I can say that it’s possible! 

I bet you’re probably wondering by now what ways I make my bathroom smelling good….

So without further ado, let’s dive right into the simple bathroom cleaning hack / scentscaping ideas that I use that really work.

5 Tricks to Keeping a Disgusting Bathroom Smelling Fresh

I find that bathroom sinks get dirty pretty fast around our house….especially our downstairs bathroom because all five of us and any visitors use it several times a day each. That’s potentially 15-20 uses per day!

I find that the best way to combat this is to find ways to play defense AND offense against bad smells!

It’s not good enough to simply mask odors and it’s not good enough to simply fill the air with good smells….we are combating an enemy that attacks on the ground AND in the air! lol

These are the things I do:

1. Wipe the bathroom sink area EVERY OTHER DAY

The easiest way I’ve found to guarantee I’m not looking at a huge cleanup job once a week is to wipe off the ceramic sink area at the first trace of yuckiness.

This usually equates to about once every other day in our house.

I just take a Clorox wipe (or these essential oil based disinfectant wipes) and quickly wipe around the sink.

The best product for you is the one you will ACTUALLY USE and feel good about using.

If you want to do this naturally, then go the essential oil route. If you need the ease of pulling a wipe out of a container, then do that! 

No judgments here. 

This step isn’t complicated or fussy—just a quick couple swipes over the faucet and the sink itself and you’re done. 

This removes any soap residue that’s accumulated over the previous two days and gets rid of watermarks on the faucet. 

It’s not that critical to use a good smelling cleaner for this job….that scent will dissipate after a very short time.

The goal here is to remove the offending odors & bacteria before that gunk has a chance to build up in the first place. If it nevers gets so bad you don’t want to deal with it, each cleanup job seems easier. 

2. Wipe under the toilet seat every 3-4 days

Same theory as the sink….

A musty pee smell is the W.O.R.S.T!! Even a few drop of week-old gooey pee under your toilet seat smells so bad.

If you get this spot more often than you do an actual cleaning, your job will be wayyyy less disgusting.

There’s nothing grosser than having to scrub goopy drops of pee from underneath a toilet seat. Get them sooner rather than later!

This can be accomplished with some toilet paper. I literally just do this twice a week after I visit the potty but before I wash my hands.

I’m already in there and already need to wash my hands so why not take 5 seconds to do this little task and quickly wipe the seat down?

3. Put a luxury scented fragrance diffuser on the sink

Trust me on this one! I wrote a post about how I found the same diffuser they used at a luxury spa I visited last year and now I have these all around my house!

My bathroom is no exception!

I didn’t have one in there for a really long time because I felt like the kids were too little to not knock it over….but now that they’re 7, 9, and 11, they can be trusted not to mess with it.

I placed this fragrance diffuser right near the back of the sink and it works amazingly well!

It’s strongly scented, yet not overwhelming and I love getting a whiff of the amazing lavender scent every time I wash my hands. I’m all about layering scents over here ya’ll, hence, the reason for point #4.

**I’m a pretty frugal person so I was a little bit timid about paying so much for this scent diffuser; however, I can say that the one I have in the bathroom has now been there for ONE YEAR and it’s still nowhere near empty. They last a REALLY long time.**

Two of my favorite alternatives to the lavendar scented Archipelago diffuser are the verbena scented one and the eucalyptus reed diffuser  from the same line.

And here’s an even bigger list of luxuy scented diffusers that I’ve been collecting over time: LUXURY SCENTED COLLECTION

You can’t go wrong with ANY of these fragrances in your bathroom!

Whenever I walk into my guest bathroom downstairs, it transports me back to the Grand America Hotel where I first learned about the Lavende scent diffuser. 

Putting one of these diffusers is there is the closest thing to make your bathroom smell like a spa, in my opinion.

The scent from these is strong enough that a little while after someone poops, the air ONLY smells like the diffuser and not the poop. 🙂 

4. Strategically position a scent packet

Now this one is gonna sound odd, but it’s KEY to making this work. 

Our bathrooms need all the extra help they can get in the smell department, so I make sure to give them a head start by MASKING some of the bad smells. When you are busy smelling something good, it’s easy to ignore some slightly bad odors. 

I buy these scented packets and have them strategically placed around the bathroom.

For a small bathroom like a powder room for guests, you literally only need one.

Where do you place it? Glad you asked! 🙂 

The BEST place to put one of these scent packets is right near an air vent.

This ensures the scent is automatically distributed into the room anytime your air conditioner or heater is blowing. 

I put mine in the corner of a magazine rack that sits next to a floor vent. It works like a charm. 

I’ve also heard of putting them INSIDE of ceiling vents. We don’t have ceiling vents or I would totally do that.

For a larger bathroom, you might need 2. Any more than that, and you’ll probably seem like you’re trying too hard! lol

If you have to use two, then I’d recommend placing one near a vent and another in a basket on top of the toilet.

I get compliments all the time on how good it smells in our powder room thans to the scent packet next to the floor air vent AND this diffuser that I place on the sink.

The combo scent blocking capabilities of these two is like none other! 

(You can read all about my love affair with the heavenly Archipelago Reed Diffuser right here >>)

5. Use POO spray! 🙂 

Yup, yet another scent-related point, but I promise you guys, it works!

It doesn’t matter how clean your bathroom is…if it smells like poop it’s gross! LOL sorry, but it’s true!

So, that’s why I make sure we keep this poo-pourri spray visible for people to use at all times.

If you haven’t heard of poo-pourri spray, it’s this magic thing that you spray into the toilet water right before you go #2 and it somehow uses essential oils to trap all the fragrance in the water!

So weird, but it totally works. You can’t keep your poop from smelling, but at least you can keep that bad odor from getting out! lol

A nice alternative to the poo spray is to make your own spray bottle as well. I haven’t gone to that extent, but I think I might try this soon using this pretty spray bottle and one of these essential oil combinations:

• lavendar + vanilla
• spearmint + eucalyptus

Do you have any brilliant ideas for keeping your bathroom smelling great? Please share!

There you have it! My top 5 ideas for keeping your bathroom smelling great, even after someone goes #2! hehe

I promise that if you implement even 2-3 of these simple cleaning tricks, you’ll have a bathroom that smells 1000% nicer ALL THE TIME time than it did before! 

What are some things you do to get a disgusting bathroom to smell nice and clean?

Ready to do more? You might like this >> What to Do to Make Your Shower Smell Good & Stay Clean

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