Interior expert shares 95p Christmas hack to make your home smell festive on a budget
WITH December just around the corner, many of us will be getting our decorations out and putting our trees up very soon.
But if you are feeling festive and want your home to match your mood and smell amazing, you’ve come to the right place.
You’re in luck as Rosalind Peters, the home interior expert at beanbags.co.uk, has shared her cost-effective hacks for making your home smell festive on a budget.
So don’t worry, you won’t need to go out and spend a fortune on fancy reed diffusers – with her cheapest hack, you’ll only need to spend 95p – yes, you heard that correctly.
Rosalind Peters said: “The festive period is a time of year that evokes both nostalgia and comfort. The familiar scents of cinnamon, cloves, apple cider, and forest pine are all part of the season’s rich tapestry of smells and flavours.
“While you can buy candles and air fresheners to mimic these classic scents, making your home smell festive doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.
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“With just a few simple ingredients found in your kitchen, you can create your own DIY home fragrance to help you celebrate this glorious season.”
According to Rosalind, if you spot some fallen pine cones on the ground whilst out on a walk, pick them up, as they not only make beautiful décor in your home but can be used to create an autumnal aroma around your home, too.
To give them a warm cinnamon scent, bake them at 100°C on an oven tray lined with tin foil for 20 minutes.
This will help remove all of the sap and open up any closed pinecones.
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Next, infuse them with cinnamon, which you can buy for as little as 95p from Sainsbury’s, by spritzing them with a mixture of cinnamon essential oil and water.
You should then let them dry for 24 hours on a newspaper before placing them around your home to make it smell festive.
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Not only this, but you can also create a gorgeous garland with dried orange slices, string and cinnamon sticks for just £6.
If you fancy a therapeutic fall activity, create your scented garland using twine, which you can pick up for £2 from Hobbycraft, dried orange slices which you can also buy in Hobbycraft, for just £3, bay leaves from Sainsbury’s for 70p and your 95p cinnamon sticks.
It’s super easy to make – you just need to drill holes into each of the dried goods, and then thread the twine through it.
In the end, you’ll have a garland that’s not only prettier than a fabric one, but it’ll smell sweeter, too.
Also, if you store it in an air-tight plastic bin after Christmas, it’ll last for years.
Not only this, but another way Rosalind recommends to get your home smelling festive is to create a simmer pot for a couple of pounds.
For a simple scented blend that lasts for hours, try creating a simmer pot by simply, add some fruit and spices to two litres of water in a saucepan, and allow it to simmer for a few hours.
You may need to add extra water every 30 minutes, however, this will encourage you to keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn’t burn.
Some of the most popular pot scents include – apple peels, orange rinds, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves or ginger root, cinnamon sticks and orange slices.
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You could also use cranberries, orange slices, cinnamon sticks, and nutmeg or bay leaves, whole cloves, and cinnamon sticks.
This is one of the most budget-friendly options as you can still eat your fruit and vegetables and only need the strip of the peels for the pot.