I would like to begin this review by asking if any of you have ever suffered from a leaking radiator? Or for that matter ever been inside a building where a radiator has leaked? If you have, you will remember that not only do burst radiators give you soggy carpets; they also make your soggy carpets very smelly. The water inside radiators is rather stinky- it reminds me of stagnant ponds, but I have also heard it being compared to a dead squirrel! To get to the point, this happened in my university office last Friday. This sort of thing always happens on a Friday, when it is too late for the university to send a plumber round that day, even when fixing the leak is a mere 5 minute job. The result, dear reader, was a Monday morning in which the carpet in my office had reached the squelchy stage and water was starting to ooze into the corridor, with the smell from all this water having been allowed to build up over the weekend. Our room reeked - hell, the floor of the building reeked - and you really don't want to have the window open all day to a Newcastle November, do you?

So, in steps my saviour in the form of a little white bottle of Febreze. Having gotten sick and tired of a cold, smelly room, I dashed off to Superdrug in my lunch break in search of an air freshener, when I found this stuff on their shelves. Febreze markets itself as a product that doesn't mask smells as air fresheners do, but removes them entirely, leaving fabrics smelling fresh and clean again - I had used it previously to get the smell of cigarette smoke and cooking out of my clothes, but had never tried it on anything this smelly before. But, it had worked really well on my clothes, and Superdrug had handy packs of it for just 99p, so if it didn't work at least I hadn't wasted a lot of money on it. Well, it was worth a go - it couldn't make my room smell any worse, could it?

Having bravely entered the smelly room again, I took out my bottle of Fe
breeze. The handy pack was a bottle about 5 inches tall and containing 100ml with a pump action spray, unlike the trigger spray on the larger bottles (500ml, which cost around £3.29). You use Febreeze by spraying it over the fabric you want to remove the smell from, keeping the spray several inches from the fabric, until the surface is damp. The Febreeze then soaks into the fabric, and is supposed to clean away any lingering smell as it dries, leaving a dry and fresh smelling surface behind. Now, while nothing specifically recommends this spray for smelly carpets - it is generally used on clothes, stinky shoes and household furniture - I couldn't see it doing any harm. The only trouble was that it is a fairly big room (there are four of us in there), and those pump action nozzles really are not meant to be used to so much it one go. But, there was enough in the handy pack to spray the entire carpet (with a bit left over), the only trouble being the nozzle kept blocking up, and I was left with a rather sore finger from all that pumping!

As the spray began to dry, I was aware of my room smelling a lot fresher - enough to close the window at any rate. The smell has not gone completely, but the carpet is still damp, so it will probably need another dose to remove the last of the stink from it. But on the plus side, when one of my fellow students walked in some 30 minutes after I had used it, the first thing she said was how much better it smelt in there, so it must be working! This is actually quite impressive, as Febreeze is not intending for such industrial strength usage, yet it still worked.

The smell from Febreeze is surprisingly pleasant as well, I must say. When I first used it, I rather expected a heavy, chemically type scent like you often get from air fresheners, but it is actually a much lighter smell and extremely fresh and clean. I suppose the nearest you could get to describing the smell would be if you could bottle up th
e smell of freshly wa
shed laundry - yes, it really is that nice! It is very effective on lesser smells than soggy carpets, so you would only need a small amount on your clothes/sofa/curtains, making a bottle last for quite long time. (Oh, and the nice people have recently brought out a Febreeze fabric conditioner that is supposed to keep your clothes smelling fresher longer as well. Umm, I know it is a little bit off topic, but I would like to add that this stuff really does not work all that well and is nowhere near as effective as the spray. So there you are, two reviews in one - excellent value for your 3p I reckon!).


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WARNING!
The makers of Febreeze - Proctor and Gamble - claim their product is safe to use around pets. However, older bottles of the product (manufactured in 1999 or earlier) may be dangerous to animals, and there are some rumours in the USA of cats and exotic birds picking up Febreeze poisoning in their owner's home. I don't know about the validity of these claims, but it may still be wise to discard older bottles and restrict how much of the spray you use in the vicinity of your pets. For more information, visit: http://www.eagleid.com/pets/febreeze.htm
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Febreeze is currently available in this country from major supermarkets and Superdrug, and is available in two varieties - original (large and handy pack size) and anti-bacterial (large only). They are manufactured by Proctor and Gamble, see www.pg.com.

I have found Febreeze to be efective on cigarette smoke, cooking smells, stale/musty smells, and for generally freshening things up. It is less effective in stinky shoes as the spray cannot be absorbed into the material as easily as it can for fabrics. I recommend you air off anthing sprayed with febreeze until you are sure it is completely dry befo
re storing it.


As always, many thanks for reading and rating! :)