How to remove the smell from the bag with folk and special means

A bag is not only a con­tain­er for var­i­ous lit­tle things that a per­son may need out­side the home. It is also an acces­so­ry, an addi­tion to the over­all image, form­ing the opin­ion of oth­ers. And if a wom­en’s or men’s bag smells unpleas­ant, imme­di­ate­ly after pur­chase or dur­ing oper­a­tion, you need to take action. You can, of course, take the prod­uct to dry clean­ing, but why not try to fix the prob­lem on your own, sav­ing on the ser­vices of spe­cial­ists. In this arti­cle, read­ers of Exper­tol­ogy mag­a­zine will learn how to remove odor from a bag at home.

Causes of an unpleasant smell in the bag

Before try­ing to remove the smell com­ing from the inte­ri­or of the acces­so­ry, you should under­stand why such a prob­lem arose. There may be sev­er­al options:

1. Organ­ic or inor­gan­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion got on the lin­ing, because of this, an unpleas­ant smell inside the bag. In this case, clean­ing or wash­ing the lin­ing is required.
2. Just an odor­ous sub­stance got on the lin­ing, for exam­ple, per­fume spilled. To fix the prob­lem, it is enough to wash and / or ven­ti­late the bag. Aro­ma absorbers can also be used.
3. The prod­uct is sewn of a mate­r­i­al that emits a smell. In this case, the bag will smell strong­ly at first, after a few months of oper­a­tion the prob­lem will dis­ap­pear by itself. To speed up the process, you can use spe­cial odor absorbers.

Hav­ing found out where the unpleas­ant smell came from, you can begin to pre­pare the prod­uct for clean­ing.

Preparing your bag for odor removal

The main mea­sures to pre­pare the prod­uct for clean­ing:

1. Take out every­thing that is in them from all pock­ets and com­part­ments of the bag.

2. Turn out the pock­ets and, if pos­si­ble, the lin­ing, shake the prod­uct so that small debris spills out of it.

3. Go over the lin­ing with a brush to remove dust and dirt embed­ded in the fab­ric.

4. If pos­si­ble, pro­tect the parts (acces­sories) of the bag that are oxi­dized, prone to rust and cor­ro­sion with poly­eth­yl­ene.

Now the prod­uct is com­plete­ly ready for clean­ing pro­ce­dures. We list and describe the main, most effec­tive and safe meth­ods.

How to remove the smell from the bag — we erase the lining of the accessory

It is known that reg­u­lar wash­ing is the best way to deal with unpleas­ant odors. If your prod­uct or at least its lin­ing can be washed in water, with deter­gents, try this method first:

1. If the lin­ing can be removed from the bot­tom and turned inside out, do so.
2. Dis­solve the shav­ings obtained by grind­ing a piece of ordi­nary laun­dry soap in water at room tem­per­a­ture. Shav­ings are obtained by rub­bing a bar on a kitchen fine grater. You can use baby soap or laun­dry soap in the form of a liq­uid.
3. If the bag can be washed from the out­side, wash and rinse in cool water. If not, wash only the lin­ing. To do this, apply a soapy solu­tion to the sponge, sat­u­rate the lin­ing with it, “squeeze” if pos­si­ble. And then, con­stant­ly rins­ing the sponge, soak the soap out of the fab­ric, the foam should stop form­ing.
4. Wipe the out­side of the prod­uct dry if pos­si­ble. Inside, put crum­pled sheets of clean paper (not news­pa­per, print­ing ink can trans­fer from it to the fab­ric), stuff the prod­uct tight­ly. As mois­ture is absorbed into the paper, change the padding. When you see that the paper is no longer wet, take the bag out onto the bal­cony or out­side for final dry­ing and air­ing.

If the pol­lu­tion seems strong to you, and you want to soak the prod­uct before wash­ing, so that the dirt comes off bet­ter, con­sid­er whether it is worth doing it, how safe it is for the acces­so­ry. Inside the bag there may be card­board frame parts, parts that are fixed with glue. After soak­ing, it can sim­ply “fall apart” into pieces.

Treatment with a solution of potassium permanganate, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar or lemon juice

The first way to remove the smell from organ­ic mat­ter (meat, rot­ten fruit, etc.) is to use a mix­ture of potas­si­um per­man­ganate and hydro­gen per­ox­ide. But keep in mind that potas­si­um per­man­ganate has a pink tint, the liq­uid pre­pared from it can stain the fab­ric. And per­ox­ide has bright­en­ing, bleach­ing prop­er­ties, so the lin­ing mate­r­i­al can shed. If you are still sure that the fab­ric will with­stand such treat­ment, pre­pare a clean­ing mix­ture. Take a liter of tepid water, dis­solve 3 tea­spoons of hydro­gen per­ox­ide and so much potas­si­um per­man­ganate in it so that the liq­uid becomes trans­par­ent and pale pink. Make sure that there are no undis­solved crys­tals at the bot­tom of the con­tain­er. Put on rub­ber gloves, sat­u­rate a sponge with the solu­tion, and thor­ough­ly wipe the lin­ing of the bag. Wait 15 min­utes, rinse off the prod­uct by wip­ing it with a damp, clean cloth or sponge. Dry­ing of the prod­uct takes place in the open air or with the help of lumps of white sheets of office paper.

Also, nat­ur­al acids dis­solved in water will help you remove the smell from the bag. You can take 1 liter of liq­uid, add a few table­spoons of vine­gar to it or 1 table­spoon of vine­gar and fresh­ly squeezed lemon juice. The acces­so­ry is processed inside, and if the fab­ric allows, then out­side, wet­ting a sponge or cot­ton pad with a solu­tion. It is not nec­es­sary to strong­ly moist­en the prod­uct, it is enough that its sur­faces become wet. The bag after pro­cess­ing in the open is kept in the fresh air. Dur­ing this time, the prod­uct has time to dry and air out, the mol­e­cules of evap­o­rat­ing acids take odor mol­e­cules with them.

How to remove the smell — we use inexpensive absorbents

To remove an unpleas­ant odor and rid the prod­uct of excess mois­ture, such sim­ple means as salt and soda, acti­vat­ed char­coal will help. This method helps in sit­u­a­tions where there is no obvi­ous con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the lin­ing fab­ric, but the irri­tat­ing aro­ma is still present. How do we use salt and soda:

1. We mix both com­po­nents in equal parts (the mass depends on the inter­nal vol­ume of the bag). Salt is desir­able to take a fine grind brand Extra.
2. Pour the mix­ture into all the pock­ets and inter­nal com­part­ments of the bag, it is enough that it cov­ers the bot­tom for a few cen­time­ters.
3. We place the prod­uct in a plas­tic bag, tight­ly tie it, stand for a week.
4. After 7 days, remove the bag, care­ful­ly remove the entire mix­ture with a brush. It should absorb not only unpleas­ant odors, but also excess mois­ture.

How to use acti­vat­ed char­coal:

1. Grind 10–20 tablets into pow­der, you can sim­ply crush them by wrap­ping them in a news­pa­per.
2. We make paper bags or small fab­ric bags, pour crushed coal into them.
3. We lay out the bags in all pock­ets and depart­ments of the bag.

If after three days the unpleas­ant smell does not go away, change the old bags for new ones with fresh coal. The pro­ce­dure can be repeat­ed sev­er­al times.

How to remove the smell from the bag with special means

In the assort­ment of hard­ware stores there are many house­hold chem­i­cals that will help get rid of an unpleas­ant smell. In par­tic­u­lar, experts rec­om­mend using the Com­bi Clean­er clean­ing foam from the well-known Sala­man­der Pro­fes­sion­al brand. It is a uni­ver­sal clean­er that is suit­able for the care of prod­ucts made of such mate­ri­als as leather, suede, tex­tiles, nubuck, for the care of patent leather acces­sories. The high­ly effec­tive and del­i­cate for­mu­la eas­i­ly elim­i­nates odors, stains, dirt, salt and water stains, restores the col­or and struc­ture of mate­ri­als. The prod­uct is suit­able for clean­ing hand­bags, as well as oth­er acces­sories and shoes. It is extreme­ly easy to use:

1. The foam can is thor­ough­ly shak­en.
2. The prod­uct is applied to a clean cloth, sponge, nap­kin, sponge.
3. The sur­face requir­ing clean­ing and main­te­nance is wiped or blot­ted.
4. The sur­face is pol­ished or cleaned with a soft brush.

After such treat­ment, the repul­sive smell from the bag will dis­ap­pear, a pleas­ant unob­tru­sive cit­rus aro­ma will remain.

You can also pur­chase a uni­ver­sal 2 in 1 fresh­en­er, for exam­ple, Nagara Aqua Beads Laven­der. This prod­uct simul­ta­ne­ous­ly absorbs unpleas­ant odors and fills the premis­es with a light aro­ma of laven­der. If you put a con­tain­er of gran­ules or direct­ly sev­er­al gran­ules in a bag for one day, you can achieve the desired effect. After that, the absorber can be used to fresh­en the air in the bath­room or toi­let room, in the liv­ing room, bed­room, etc.

How to remove odor from a new bag

Some users have encoun­tered a sit­u­a­tion where an unpleas­ant odor comes from the inside of a brand new prod­uct. This is due to the fact that the bag was made of poor qual­i­ty mate­ri­als or tech­nolo­gies were vio­lat­ed dur­ing its pro­duc­tion, it was stored or trans­port­ed in inap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions. In this case, you can take the fol­low­ing mea­sures:

1. Wash the bag or clean it with clean­ing foam (the same Com­bi Clean­er) inside and out.
2. Use absorbents that will absorb an unpleas­ant odor. These can be spe­cial absorbers or impro­vised means (salt and soda, acti­vat­ed car­bon).
3. Use fra­grances that will kill the unpleas­ant “aro­ma” from the bag.

As nat­ur­al fla­vors for deodor­iz­ing the inte­ri­or of the acces­so­ry, you can use sachets, home-made bags made of cot­ton mate­r­i­al filled with ground cof­fee, cit­rus peels, and fra­grant herbs. You can put cot­ton wool soaked in your favorite essen­tial oil or per­fume in a sachet. Per­fume or essen­tial oils can sim­ply be applied to a tis­sue hand­ker­chief and put in the pock­et of the bag. It will be invis­i­ble, but will exude aro­ma for a long time.