How to Remove Kitchen Odors from your Hands

Kitchens produce some of the most wonderful, comforting, down-home smells. But getting to the end product sometimes involves handling food products that don't smell so nice: garlic, onion, fish . . . Even cleaning products, like bleach, can leave an unsavory smell on bare hands. How do we enjoy our scrumptious meal when our hands smell so foul?

Coffee is not only on of the great smells coming from the kitchen, it's also a product that can be used to remove those odors from your hands. Coffee is often used to cleanse the palate and to cleanse the nasal passages between smellings. Wine tasters sometimes smell coffee in between bouquets.

It's suggested in some places to just take used coffee grounds and scrub your hands with them after handling less-than-pleasant smelling food products in the kitchen. However, there are also coffee soaps that offer the qualities of a good handwashing - softening, soothing, and odor reducing! While the soap may leave behind just a trace of the unwanted smell you are attempting to erase, it overall does a pretty good job of removing that smell while leaving hands soft.

Stainless steel is also noted to remove odors. Wiping hands on stainless steel will not only remove unwanted odors, but even perfumed odors from soaps and lotions.

These "soaps" come in different shapes that are easy to hold in the hand. Wiping your hands on the inside of your stainless steel sink or the front of your stainless steel refrigerator might get part of the job done, but these smaller, hand-held items allow you to get in between the fingers and folds of the hand, ensuring odor free hands.

There are other suggestions floating around out there, all of which may be effective but will require a little more time for scrubbing/soaking, and completely intact skin as some of these may burn or sting cuts and scrapes. Try out:

• Lemon juice - citrusy!

• Tomato juice - supposed to remove skunk smell, right?

• Salt - water, salt and scrub!

• Baking soda - water, baking soda and more scrub!

• Toothpaste - not sure about this one, but give it a go!

• Mouthwash - I guess the theory here is that if it will make your breath smell good, then why not your hands?

Trial and error - find what works best for you!