My sister sent me a DIY for a car freshener that she saw in her Doterra magazine, so a few weeks ago I gave it a try
It's very simple: Put a few drops of lavender oil into 1 cup of baking soda and mix it up. Using a sifter, pour the mixture onto the floor and seats of your car. Wait for an hour then vacuume it up.
I got my lavender and baking soda, put it into a container with a lid and shook it up. Now of course when shaking a container, you have to do some sort of dance. Fortunately for us all, I don't have any documentation of my 'mixing up the oil and baking soda' dance.
I don't have a sifter, so I poured the mixture into my hand and tried to use my fingers as the sifter. It looked more like my 2 year old grabbed handfuls of the stuff and tossed it all over the car.
The cup covered two seats, the floor of the driver seat and the entire floor on the back. I'm sure it would have gone farther if I was property sifting it.
It said to wait an hour, but my hour turned into 90 min. Why you ask? Because I have two children who have this 6th sense that tells them to play nicely by themselves or with each other whenever I have free time, but the seconed I have something to do they suddently need me and demand my attention. At one point things went like this.
My daughter saw me walking to the garage and said:
"mom, what you newing?"
"I'm going to vacuume the car"
"NOOOOOO" she crouched down and covered her face with her hands. This is a new move for her, and it's pretty fun to watch this overly dramatic display of emotion.
me:"it's ok, I'll be back really soon"
"NOOOOO" she then raced over and latched herself onto my leg.
At this point my son wanted in on the game and he started giving me the third degree;
"mom, I have been waiting and WAITNG for you to play school with me" *said in the most pitiful pouty voice imaginable* (apparently he forgot that we had spent 30 min playing school right before I threw the baking soda all over the car)
Thus I found myself having to use a crow bar to pry a drama queen off my leg while simultaneously arguing with a 4 year old.
So here we are at the 90 min mark. I went out to vacuum my car, then vacuume it again. Then got really annoyed that my car looked like this.
The baking soda had found little patches of moisture and latched onto them with a vengeance. Knowing that my time was limited before I found myself surrounded by the traveling duo of drama queens, I got a rag, wiped up what I could and called it good.
The Verdict: My car smelled great. It was a very mild, fresh lavender scent. However, it didn't last long. I did it on a Thursday night and by Sunday morning I could no longer smell it. I basically got 2 full days of a nice smelling car. That's it! Two days. All that drama and work for only 2 days? No thank you.
So here I am 0 for 2 with air fresheners. Maybe my home to just destined to smell like butt paste and my car like moldy food lurking between the seats.