Abolish that Lovely Dirty Camper Smell from a Motorhome

As much as we all love the call of the great outdoors, oh the joys of having indoor motorhome plumbing can lead to some odors. Spending your life hiking up mountains, mountain biking along alpine streams, cuddling with your smelly adventure dog can make for smelly campers by the evening back at camp.  In between setting up camp, creating a great after-fifteen-mile hike gourmet dinner and relaxing by the campfire you might want to find time for RV deodorizing. As with everything with this RV and camping lifestyle to succe

ssfully RV deodorize, you have to make some plans in advance.

As someone who is filled with wanderlust, I love this RV lifestyle. Our family is blessed to spend many months most years traveling this great country of ours in our 34-foot Fleetwood motorhome. However, when Stormy the 99 Fleetwood Storm came into our lives ten years ago she had been sitting in storage with a full black tank for many years. A smelly black tank disaster was born! Many YouTube videos were watched. Blogs were read and research was done on successful RV deodorizing. We bought multiple bags of ice, activated charcoal pellets and Porta Pak Tank RV Deodorizer (We still swear by these) We tried our best to deal with somebody else’s shit. Literally.

We tried our best to neutralize all those dirty camper scents and all the smells that come from adventuring; Dirty sweaty hikers and dog butt. Sometimes even the cat box. (Yes, I said cat box) At home where we live in our mountain town of Big Bear Lake California at over seven thousand feet none of the homes have air conditioning in this alpine forest. When we have warm summer nights we sometimes choose to camp in the motorhome in our driveway and take advantage

of our working air conditioner. Of course, we sometimes encourage our twenty-two-pound Norwegian Forest Cat to join us. He gets hot too in July when it’s eighty-seven degrees here! Even with all those not-so-fresh smells you may find in an older motorhome, It is an uphill battle but I have found that all these years later there are some great secrets to owning a motorhome that smells, well, clean-ish.

Do you think you can’t own an odor-free motorhome? As our forty-sixth crotchety old man president would say, “That’s malarky!” There are some easy tricks and tips to be fairly successful when it comes to RV Deodorizing.

When we first began cross-country motor-homing ten years ago we did have some fancy candles in the motorhome from Bed Bath and Beyond. These filled the motorhome with eighty dollars worth of amazing fake flower scents. Until they fell into a crevice while driving up ten thousand for Monarch Pass in Colorado and ended up crushed with glass every where from our slide coming out eventually. Candles may be romantic and make the motorhome smell nice but they are one of those things that just end up moving around the motorhome during a road trip and you can guarantee we will be so distracted by all the moose grazing outside our stunning Jackson Wyoming campground that we could possibly be distracted while packing up camp. Those forty dollar candles just might end up crushed into one of the slides when we get ready to leave Gros Ventre Camp Ground right outside the Tetons

Let’s talk about poo!

Let’s face it, when you live this motorhome lifestyle your toilet is basically pretty similar to a pit toilet

while camping. You can try to neutralize the smell of last night’s Chicken Curry but it is a uphill battle. As much as we adore cooking up an Indian food dinner, man those cumin and curry spices linger in the motorhome! But that is nothing compared to the stench down below in our holding pits.

Every motorhome has a black tank and they can get pretty funky. There are multiple different solutions to clean your black tank. Obviously, flushing your tank with water right after dumping is the easiest solution. Purchasing a quality black tank cleaner is vital to maintaining a non-nasty black tank. Purchasing RV toilet paper is another significant upgrade to keeping your black tank as fresh as possible. Yes, toilet paper made specially for RVs is crucial! RV toilet paper does make a major difference as regular toilet paper can build up and get stuck to the lining of your motorhome.

A great addition to a clean toilet area in your RV is installing a bidet. This can make a huge difference in your potty cleanliness.  Not only does it keep your butt clean but it does wonders to keep your RV toilet smelling, well as fresh as an RV toilet can smell.

Another great tip for RV deodorizing is to place a few drops of essential oils inside the toilet paper roll. I prefer lavender or eucalyptus oil.

RV deodorizing pro tips

• Add water softener powder to a bit of water in your black tank after you empty it. The water softener helps waste from sticking to the walls of your tank.
• Fresh-smelling liquid laundry detergent; Add this to your emptied black tank. Honestly, for this part of the dirty job you can buy the cheap stuff from Dollar Tree.
• Ice chips. Ice chips? Is your RV in the delivery room? When your tank is empty, add a whole bag of ice chips after you dump. Just dump them straight down the toilet. These will rattle around in the tank as you drive to your next destination, knocking all that crap (Literally) off the walls of your black tank.
• Make sure you store your dirty laundry in air-tight containers. Seriously, you don’t need all those sweaty dirty hiker odors invading your camper.
• Purchase activated charcoal moisture eliminators from Dollar Tree or Amazon. Place them throughout your motorhome.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, in the RV

Obviously when being successful at RV deodorizing you want to keep your rig as clean as possible. Before our big road trips, I start with a deep clean of the motorhome. I use Murphy wood soap and hot water on all the wood followed by a good coat of Endust furniture polish or lemon oil on all wooden components.

Bleach that bathroom bitch!

When it comes to the toilet and the sinks I bleach everything. When it comes to keeping your camper smelling fresh, you can never have too much bleach in my opinion. Planning a cross-country road trip? Pack plenty of fresh-smelling laundry soap, and fabric softener with a lovely scent. You may be having fun vacationing but when you roll into an actual RV park with laundry facilities every week or so, make sure you wash that bedding! Campers who are relaxing by the campfire in the evening carry those campfire smells back into their motorhome’s bedroom by about ten p.m. or whenever the quiet time is in your campground of choice. When you have time for multiple loads of laundry, wash those floor mats, musty towels and even the dog’s bed if you have time.

A cordless vacuum is a must when making sometime of an attempt to keep the motorhome clean and nasty scent-free. We have what basically looks like a nineties Dust Buster and it is absolutely amazing for cleanup, especially with all that dog hair in our motorhome! No one wants a motorhome that smells like a dog! Investing in a Febreeze wet mop will keep your motorhome clean and smelling fresh if you have tile or laminate flooring. I love a lot of the natural Meyer’s cleaners for keeping our motorhome smelling fresh at all times.

One of the best ways to remove those odors from your motorhome is to tear out that dirty carpet and install laminate hardwood. We spent a week back in the autumn of 2019 completing that project in our motorhome and the change in the look, feel and odor of our twenty-five-year-old rig was remarkable. All those carpets hold onto smells, especially when you like to stir up a delicious Anglo-Indian style Butter Chicken on the road like we do.

Still stuck with a smelly carpet? I swear by Glade carpet fresh powder! You may still have carpet but at least you can make it not smell like wet dog! Always try to rent a carpet shampooer at least annually to shampoo those RV carpets before you leave home for your summer trips. That will make a big difference in removing all those dirty camper odors from nasty carpets.

RV deodorizing Plugins

The plug-ins from Bath and Body work great. I am partial to all those fall and Christmas smells they get. I usually stock up for the year in September. I also love the Eucalyptus ones. I like nothing more than pretending that our motorhome is also a day spa! Yes, the Bath and Body Works ones are more expensive. The Febreeze ones you buy from the regular grocery store are priced more reasonably.

RV deodorizing with Incense

I’m the only person in my family who cares for incense so I don’t burn it in our motorhome. My boyfriend says it makes the motorhome smell like hippies. But I truly think burning incense is the absolute best way to remove that funky motorhome odor. As long as you don’t mind your motorhome smelling like thirty-four feet of Grateful Dead good times!

Wash that dog!

Our vacation pup lives her best life out on the open roads of America. This Catahoula just loves to swim and we get a chance for her to swim most days while on holiday. Yes, that means she can be a smelly bitch! I do bring puppy shampoo with us and when we are camped at an RV Resort with full hookups I do give her a bath in the RV shower. I usually do this on a hot day. I’ll put on my bathing suit, get in the shower with her (Why, yes, it is very cramped! and hopefully, both of us come out clean and cooled down! It’s a refreshing way to spend an afternoon!

Many things can contribute to a smelly camper. Obviously having a clean-smelling motorhome starts with your holding tanks. The second priority should be your toilet area. But that is just the beginning to having a motorhome that smells clean. I find I enjoy my vacation so much better in a clean rig that smells like home!