Cigarette Stench
How do I get rid of cigarette stench stuck to "hard" objects? Situation: My mother spent the last many years of her life sitting in her kitchen or den chain-smoking cigarettes and listening to her ...
Forum Discussion
AuntSmurf wrote:Yes, this is a good method.
While working in a motel I discovered that Windex with a little bit of rubbing alcohol works great at taking the cig residue and smell off of hard surfaces.
I repair vintage electronics and if they were operated in a smoking environment the components and circuit boards are a magnet for cigarette tar. I smoke but am gagged by some of the gear I have to deal with, it reeks.
If dealing with the smoking residue on a hard surface that won't be harmed by water, I wash it with Dawn or other surfactant and follow up with Isopropyl alcohol. I then place it outdoors in the sun or under a lamp to dry.
After a couple of days of airing, if it still smells, I repeat the process. The most repetitions I've repeated is three.
Removing residue from porous surfaces like painted wallboard, curtains, wood, etc. is a whole different thing. I've done fire abatement and we used a lot of "bubble-gum" spray to eliminate the odors in porous surfaces after washing. Ozone is the best odor eliminator but it can get costly as the scale of or size increases (like a room, so to speak). Some of the molecular based odor sprays can work pretty well on hard to freshen items.
