A home can look good but if it smells bad, what's the point. Even if the house is tidy, if I smell stinky shoes or the unpleasant odours that linger after cooking fish I’m unsettled and won’t be at ease until they're gone.

It’s best of course to deal with foul odours at the source - change the kitty litter, empty the garbage, do a thorough cleaning and open the windows to let the fresh air in. But sometimes we need extra help.

Thankfully there are healthy and effective alternatives to conventional air freshners. which often contain many contain toxic chemicals and artificial perfumes, which can trigger breathing difficulties, headaches and irritate your eyes. They are especially hard on people with allergies and asthma.

Here are few ways to eliminate odours in our home more gently:

An open box of baking soda is a cheap and effective way to deodorize smelly rooms and shoes. Leave an opened box behind the cat litter or in the fridge. I've never tried it but I read a bowl of vinegar placed in room with a stubborn odour can get rid of it completely.

Several years ago, I was introduced to the Lamp Berger, a fragrance lamp that disperses scented oil using a heated stone attached to a cotton wick. The catalytic combustion wick was originally developed in the 19th century for use in hospitals and mortuaries. While no longer considered effective for use in hospitals, the lamps remain popular as air fresheners.

The lamps are sold on the premise that the lamp's flameless, low-temperature catalytic combustion converts odour molecules into harmless substances such as carbon dioxide and water.

Another effective way to improve air quality is to burn beeswax candles. Burning beeswax acts like an indoor air purifier. Pollen, dust, dirt and pollutants carry a positive charge and get suspended in the air. The negative ions released when you burn beeswax are said to negate the positive charge of air contaminants and the neutralized ions are sucked back into the burning candle or fall to the ground.

Burning paraffin candles has the opposite effect. It releases soot and other toxins and carcinogens, which doesn’t surprise me as it’s made from the sludge at the bottom of barrels of crude oil that’s been treated and bleached with benzene and other chemical solvents for use in candles. 

Beeswax candles are more expensive than those made with paraffin, but they are longer burning than any other candle, including vegetable or soy wax candles. That's because beeswax has the highest melting point among all known waxes, which results in a significantly longer burn time. This offsets their higher cost. They also drip very little, if any at all.

Finally, one sure way to improve the quality of air in your home is to have house plants. Not only do they add living beauty to the inside of our homes but indoor plants add oxygen and clear the air of carbon dioxide and other chemicals. Some are better at cleaning the air than others. The good ones include palm plants, snake plants and aloe vera to name only a few.