Eliminate Odors Naturally With Fresh Wave

Thankfully the days of going out on the town and coming home with your clothes wreaking of second hand smoke are long behind us, but there are still many odor-licious items and situations that need to be dealt with on a daily basis. Laundry basket sitting for a week with spit up & blown-out baby clothes and sweaty socks & gym clothes marinating in it. The shoe closet. The diaper pail. You get the drift.

Unfortunately, a lot of the products out there for deodorizing or covering up odors are loaded with chemicals I'd rather not have in our home, in the air my children and I are breathing!

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Related: Phthalates, Dioxins, and BPA, OH MY!

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So, I was intrigued when I heard about a line of odor eliminators, with 3 items available exclusively at Target no less, claiming to be safe, natural, and effective. It's called Fresh Wave, and instead of covering up or masking odors, their products break down the odor causing particles on a molecular level rendering them inert. Whoa. Shut the front door, right?

Fresh Wave products are non-toxic and safe to use around kids and pets, phew, and they have a handy dandy "odor guide" chart on their website showing you which of their products are best for which odors. For example, their spray is great for skunk (glad I didn't have the opportunity to test that one out), soy candle for smoke, etc etc. From drain and disposal deodorizor to pet shampoo to vacuum pearls, it seems they've thought of everything! They even have a line for baby items!

But the big question is, do they work!?? I personally tested out the 3 products available exclusively at target: the gel (next to the garbage bin under our kitchen sink), the packs (in our stinky shoe closet), and the spray (on a onesie wreaking of spit-up). They all have a fairly strong fragrance, but it's very fresh and gender neutral, I would describe it as sort of a lemon-grass. The spray was very effective at neutralizing the smell and not adding fragrance - once dry, the onesie no longer smelled of spit-up or the spray. Success!! The gel and the packs, on the other hand, it's hard to know if they neutralized the bad smells or simply overpowered them with Fresh Wave's own scent (the lemon-grassy one - which did dissipate over the first 24 hours to a fairly faint scent). Either way, it was much more pleasant than the previous stench. So I'll call that a success, too.

The ingredients listed on the product labels are "water and essential plant oils", sounds good but I'm always wary of such vagueness. Curious about what exactly that meant, I reached out to Rachael Gleason, Public Relations and Social Media Manager for OMI Industries and Fresh Wave, who replied, "Fresh Wave is made with a proprietary blend of water plant oils, including  lime, pine, aniseed, cedarwood, and clove. Since we are not a fragrance based product and actually remove the odor molecules, there are no harsh chemicals, no phthalates or alcohol in any Fresh Wave products. Just simple, pure ingredients and science." I guess I'll never understand the science part of it, but that's nothing new, ha!! But the explanation of "essential plant oils" satisfied my curiosity and worry.

You can find Fresh Wave odor eliminating products for purchase on their website and Target (online and in stores)!

So, what do you think - gonna give it a try? Do you have an air freshener or odor eliminator you already love? Share in a comment below!

Disclaimer: Although I did receive these products free of charge, all thoughts and opinions are my own and completely unbiased.