Home Decor

My Secret to a Fresh-Smelling Home? This Diffuser.

Even if my place is messy, at least it smells nice.

by:
October  4, 2021
Photo by Vitruvi

My house can be a mess with clean(ish) laundry piled up on the couch and a stack of pans “soaking” in the sink, but the one thing that’s non-negotiable? It has to smell nice.

While a fresh-smelling home can’t exactly hide the clothes and cookware, it can at least mask the smell of days-old fruit hanging out in the garbage can when I forget to compost or when the mud room starts to smell like eau de sweaty socks. Even as I write this while sitting sprawling out on the couch with yet another pile of clothes next to me, my trusty Vitruvi Stone Diffuser is silently transforming my living room-turned-office into Acadia National Park with its bounty of balsam fir trees.

The Stone diffuser comes in eight neutral colors, and true to its name, the ceramic cover feels textured and substantial. The White blends beautifully into my neutral living room (though the Terracotta has been calling my name for a while) and sits quietly behind me during video calls where no one notices it... until they notice it. It runs the whole day, or until it runs out of water—which gives me a good reason to get up for a walk.

Photo by Vitruvi

I keep the Vitruvi Stay diffuser in my kitchen to keep cooking smells in check until I can replace the broken range hood. And yes, to mask smelly garbage, too. It’s bigger and lasts longer than the Stone, though it only comes in four colors. I’ve got the Espresso, one of the newer shades, and every time I look at it, I’m reminded of how much I need coffee (I haven’t quite decided if that’s a good or bad thing). The smooth metallic finish doesn’t have the kind of texture that the Stone version has, but it does mean that wet or oily fingerprints can be easily wiped down.

I love the coziness and warmth of a candle, but after years of being a beauty editor and smelling every kind of perfume and scented body care product that came across my desk, my nose prefers solo notes like lavender or ylang ylang instead of a mix of scents that I can’t identify. With a diffuser, I can use whatever essential oil I like and depending on how much I use, I can control the intensity of the scents.

Photo by Vitruvi

But of the many reasons that I love my Vitruvi diffusers, the biggest one would have to be convenience. I keep a bottle of essential oil next to the sink for easy refills when the diffusers are low, though the long run times keep these trips to a minimum. The Stone can run up to eight hours and the Stay up to 16, so I can keep them on all day without much maintenance or monitoring. The auto shut-off features come in handy when I forget to turn them off, too—which is all the time.

All this means I can fold the laundry, wash the dishes, and even take out the garbage if I’m feeling ambitious, without having to worry about open flames. Eh, I’ll do it tomorrow.


What’s your trick for a fresh-smelling home? Drop some inspo below!

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Jada Wong

Written by: Jada Wong

Jada is the market editor at Food52 with a decade of experience writing and editing for online publications such as Refinery29, Cosmopolitan, and Insider.

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