What is Bamboo Charcoal and How Do I Use It?

When I first started using bamboo charcoal I was very skeptical. I was sure I’d wasted my money. I had two very stinky problems but I’m not sure which one I used the bamboo charcoal on first. Anyway, one of the problems was urine on the carpet in one of the bedrooms. When you have kids there are always accidents. He was tired, it was late, he was still very young and he decided to pee in a corner of the bedroom instead of the bathroom (they look so similar, right?).

I had tried every cleaning trick I knew to remove that smell and I thought it was going well. The smell had gone…until summer hit.

The heat of summer brought out the stench of the urine and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. I exhausted all my natural remedies and even resorted to using some harsh chemicals out of desperation. But with the humidity it seemed like the only solution would be to replace the entire room of carpet.

My budget at the time didn’t extend to that!

Could I bear the stench of stale urine? Almost. Could I pretend that other people didn’t smell it too? No.

It was downright embarrassing when friends visited. This bedroom is near the family room and I was sure everyone who visited could smell it.

What would they think? I don’t clean!

Desperation kicks in…

I was running out of ideas. To be honest I’d never even heard about bamboo charcoal bags at that stage. I was searching the net looking for ideas on stinky shoes (ah, that was my other stinky problem!) and I came across it.

After reading customer reviews I learnt that a lot of people were using bamboo charcoal for really stubborn bad smells. They were using it as a last ditch effort to stop the stench (just like me). I bought a bag of bamboo charcoal online. Even as I was hitting the buy button I was sure it was a useless product.

Let’s face it, I’d scrubbed that carpet and powdered it and vacuumed it and scrubbed it again. What could a bag of charcoal possibly do, that scrubbing couldn’t?

Spoiler alert…

Let me fast forward a bit and say…since that first bag of bamboo charcoal I’ve bought about a dozen more bags. Not all for me (I’m not that stinky!). Most were for family who were also doubtful about the secret super powers of bamboo charcoal. Since I was completely convinced by its results I bought the stuff for them so they could move on and dispel their disbelief.

Back to the details…

I’d read about people placing bamboo charcoal bags in cupboards to get rid of smells and placing them in shoes and inside other things like boxes or drawers.

But my stubborn stench was located out in the open in a room. Sure it was in the corner but it wasn’t “contained” in a small space. This is probably why I was so skeptical about using it.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I took the bamboo charcoal out of its pretty bag and just used it in the plain boring rough fabric bag that contained the actual charcoal pieces. Surely it would give it more of a chance of working if there was more contact with the smell.  This worked.

I simply dropped the bamboo charcoal bag on the spot with the urine and went on with the general chaos that was filling my day.

Did the bamboo charcoal work on urine? (you know the answer to this one!)…

To be honest I actually kind of forgot about the bag.

A few days later (less than a week) I stopped in the bedroom and actually sniffed the air. It was a hot humid day and we’d been out of the house and there was no air conditioning running. Usually that was a disaster combination for the urine stench in the carpet. But there was no smell. At first I couldn’t actually believe it was true.

Had I lost my sense of smell? Was I imagining the lack of smell (is that possible, imagining a “lack of”)?

I was rather amazed but also busy, so I kept doing what I needed to do.

The next day, I sniffed the bedroom again. Definitely gone.

I was so doubtful about the effectiveness of the charcoal that I actually removed the bag and put it in another room just to test what would happen to the bedroom.

Within 24 hours the smell had returned.

I was slightly disappointed but also full of admiration for that little bag of charcoal. At that point I was completely sold on the idea of using bamboo charcoal for stinky situations.

To be honest I then left the bag of black charcoal on the carpet for about 6 months. I don’t know if it needed to stay there that long, but it worked, so I just left it there. It was out of the way and no one tried to eat it or remove it so I just let it sit.

How does bamboo charcoal work?

If you want a scientific explanation, you won’t find it here. All I know is that the more contact you give the charcoal with the smell, the better it works. So, take off the pretty cover if it is double layered.

According to the description my product was “activated” bamboo charcoal and I could “re-activate” it by placing it in the sun if its effectiveness was reduced. I could also use it for about 3 years and then dispose of it by opening up the bag and pouring the black pieces of charcoal onto the garden like compost.

This all sounded very natural to me. And I liked it.

I love natural remedies for home problems. Anything that I can do myself and do without using harsh chemicals suits me just fine.

If there’s a natural solution and it saves you and your kids from exposure to toxins, go for it.

I’m so glad I took the risk on a new product and bought some of this wonder charcoal.

What other smells does bamboo charcoal tackle?

Next I used bamboo charcoal on my shoes. I was at that stage where my kids were still young enough to cause me sleep deprivation almost every night but they were also running wild during the day so I had to keep up with them.

I was all about comfort. And the number one comfort item was my shoes.

Almost every day I was wearing my most comfortable shoes. They were slip-on with a closed-in style and memory foam in the sole – so comfortable. The problem with wearing closed-in shoes without socks is that they get very stinky very fast.

I really didn’t want to be buying new shoes every few weeks so I looked for a solution to smelly shoes. I needed a natural shoe deodorizer.

There are natural home-made sprays you can make for your shoes. These are good and I still use these but I wanted more.

I bought the bamboo charcoal product that is specially shaped for each shoe. They are a longer design than the other bags so you can slip them into your shoe.

Bamboo charcoal for stinky shoes?

Now, remember, I was already sold on the idea of using charcoal for eradicating smells, so when I used them on my shoes I wasn’t getting too excited. I knew they’d work.

Yes, it worked but not perfectly. The smell was better, it did deodorize the shoes, but it didn’t go completely. Maybe this was because I was wearing the shoes almost every day.

I still use the product for my shoes today. But for those “every day” shoes I don’t usually place the charcoal bag into them every day. Why? Because I’m lazy or distracted or both.

I know it sounds crazy, because it only takes 5 seconds to do it, but if you’re a mom you know that any extra effort is sometimes too much.

I often slip my shoes off and don’t bend over to place the charcoal bags into them because I’ve got other items in my hands or one of the kids is calling me or the washing machine is bleating at me because I put too many towels in there and now it’s unbalanced. You know what it’s like.

So, yes they work for stinky shoes but sometimes it’s just too inconvenient.

Does bamboo charcoal remove extreme smells?

I really should mention this, in case you face this problem in your home.

My parents were complaining about an awful smell coming from the cupboard under their stairs. The smell wasn’t always there and it was quite a mystery.

They searched and searched but couldn’t find any reason for the smell. There were plumbing pipes in that area so they thought it might be a water damage or mold smell, but it wasn’t that type of smell. They did their best to try and locate the source of the smell but nothing showed up.

The stench was so bad that they suspected a dead animal. There was no evidence of a dead rat or mouse but they were highly suspicious that it might be something like that.

I remembered reading a review by a women who found a dead animal (might have been a squirrel from memory) in a cupboard in her attic. She couldn’t remove the smell until she used bamboo charcoal.

My parents were skeptical (just like I had been) so I bought them a bag of the stuff and they placed it in the cupboard under the stairs.

It worked.

Still, to this day, they do not know what that stench was, but they don’t care anymore because the bamboo charcoal removed the smell.

It works like magic, it really does.

Of course, they were lucky that their mystery smell was contained in a cupboard because they could throw in the bag and let it do it’s work. This is how it works best.

But as you know, from my smelly problem mentioned above, you can even get it to work on the carpet in an open room.

Is bamboo charcoal a natural remedy for anything else?

I know you’ve probably heard about black charcoal being used in soaps, toothpastes, scrubs and lots of other personal products. Sure, it’s in those and one day soon I might write a post about those types of uses for charcoal.

But right now I just want you to know how effective it is to get rid of nasty smells.

If you have a stinky problem in any room of your house, consider whether bamboo charcoal could be the answer. It’s affordable, it’s natural and it’s easy to order online.

And I haven’t even mentioned how good it is as a natural deodorizer in the car. Just wait…I’ll tell you all about that one in another post. Get some and try it out today. You’ll be so pleased you did.

Click Here to see more details about these pyramid bags

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