Quick Fix

Have I mentioned our ugly house is kinda smelly? In addition to being really dirty and dusty, it smelled. Opening the windows helped get rid of some of that old, musty smell; however, it didn't help inside the closets.

One of the largest boxes impeding walking through our home needed to be unloaded in the hall closet, BUT that closet had some less-than-desirable shelf paper along with the moldy smell. I initially thought I could remove the shelf paper and that would be that. You can probably figure out how wrong I was! It left a sticky mess on some shelves and revealed an ancient odor that I did not want tainting my towels and sheets.

After pricing wood to cut new shelves, I finally decided to use some old brown paint we had left over from a previous project in our old apartment. A little paint will cover "old" smells quickly and more cost-efficiently than buying new wood (or in the case of walls, new drywall).

The paint I used wasn't the best--it had some clumps--but it did the trick for shelves that will constantly be covered with linens. I painted the shelves on our deck without putting down plastic or newspaper. I would recommend doing that if you like your deck (or floor, porch or driveway), but ours needs to be repainted anyway. You can also use cheesecloth to strain out clumps from older paint if you're painting something that will be seen.

A "new" closet with no funky smells! And it took less than an hour and $0 for two coats of paint on each shelf.