How To Get Rid Of Skunk Smells

How To Get Rid of Skunk Smells It's a classic scene. You walk around a corner in the middle of the night and stumble upon a skunk. The skunk is cornered and surprised. Your dog starts barking. The next thing you know, the skunk is blasting it's way out of danger. You and your dog are covered in skunk smell, along with your whole back yard and tool shed. So how do you get rid of the skunk's smell?

Common Remedies

An old home remedy is tomato juice. I've heard some people claim this works. I know my father ran over a skunk on his golf cart one night and got sprayed, and the tomato juice trick worked for him. He used tea tree oil shampoo to remove the stink from his hair.

There are people who swear this technique doesn't work. It depends on how directly you were sprayed. If tomato juice doesn't work, you need to take it to the next level with one of the following techniques.

White Vinegar

This cuts the skunk oil where soap and water do not. Mix one liter of white vinegar with a teaspoon of dish washer detergent and a fourth of a cup of baking soda. Bathe in this mixture and hit every spot.

Hydrogen Peroxide

Try 3% hydrogen peroxide instead of white vinegar. Mix it with baking soda and a teaspoon of dish washer detergent. This is a solid substitute for the White vinegar. I would suggest using the vinegar first, though, since peroxide acts as a bleach and can get messy for your clothes and carpet.

Bleach

Use a ten percent mixture of bleach with a ninety percent mixture of water. Use this only on outdoor areas or places which either are immune from bleaching or do not matter. This is for porches and picnic areas only.

For Clothes

Wash clothes that have been hit by a skunk smell immediately. Treat the clothes with additional treatments before you put it in the washer. You might need to wash your clothes twice to make the smell go away.

For Cars or Household Smells

Use household sprays like Febreeze for the odd case you have smells on your carpet or furniture. If someone has transferred the smell by dropping clothes on the floor or couch, a good household spray should do the trick.

It is more common that a car is sprayed by a skunk. If this happens, you'll need to treat the car as you would your carpet or furniture. From personal experience, smells linger on cars longer than on people. This is because the oils get on the bottom side of the car, so that spraying the inside of your car only masks the stench.

Do what you can to mask the spray and make it bearable for the time being, but you might have to deal with a slight stench while it takes a few days for the stench to wear away. It will dissipate from day to day.