When Your Basement Apartment Smells Musty These 9 Renter Friendly Tips WORK

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We realized that our daughter’s basement apartment smells musty when she came home for a visit. It was obvious. ALL her clothes had that icky musty smell. She was embarrassed too. She could tell she wasn’t smelling great when she was around her college friends, but she didn’t know what to. Poor kid!

Luckily (or unluckily) we have a lot of experience dealing with musty smells. We wrote about it all here: How to Get Rid of Musty Smells in Cabins, Basements and more ~ 11 Simple Ways. But some of our tips were not going to help our daughter.

She’s a renter – she only has so much control over what she can do in her apartment. She can’t remove carpets or paint all the walls.

So we jumped into action and came up with a renter-friendly musty smell removal plan for her. And that’s what we’re sharing today! Here’s what worked to make her basement apartment smell so much better! (We knew it worked the next time she visited and her suitcase of clothes had no terrible musty odor at all. 🙌)

What causes the musty smell in basement apartments?

You’re not going to like this answer: it’s likely mold and mildew.

Closed, dark and damp places are the perfect location for molds to thrive.  It’s probably not the first time you’ve heard this, but mold and mildew aren’t exactly healthy.  If you’re smelling it, you’re also breathing it in.

Ideally you locate the source of the smell and stop it. But when you rent you can only do so much. Having a conversation with your landlord can be a good idea, especially if you try our list and it’s still smelly.

When Your Basement Apartment Smells Musty These 9 Renter Friendly Tips WORK

1. Get the moisture out of the air ASAP

• Using a dehumidifier is key.  This one is affordable and gets great reviews.
• Run it as much as needed – but you must make sure it’s emptying.
  • Our daughter’s landlord had one, and it was on, but it was not being emptied. She didn’t know to do this. Once she started emptying it the smell started to improve a bit.
  • Try to place the dehumidifier where you can empty it more easily.
  • Consider figuring out how to have it empty continually.
    • Most dehumidifiers shut off when they’re full of water. And that stops helping you.
    • At our weekend place we took out the water storage tub on the dehumidifier and set up the whole thing to drain directly into the bathtub.  We just lift it out when someone wants to shower.
    • Sometimes there’s a outflow hose that can be directed into a sink or floor drain.

Kitty litter can help, but we didn’t use this in her apartment. Its regular job is to absorb moisture and odours from cats and it can do the same job in homes. We did this in our mobile home; we put takeout containers of kitty litter under beds and in closets. Change the kitty litter when it gets damp or doesn’t seem to be working.

2. Make the air cleaner

This was extremely helpful: we sent her this Smart Air Purifier with HEPA filter.

The digital screen turns from green to red or purple when the air quality is bad. When she plugged it in it was red! And the readout was triple digits! Very scary that her air quality was so bad.

She set it up near her closet and let it run on max. Within a few days the air quality was in the green/safe level and smell was so much better, too!

She keeps it running on auto all the time now. We bought a second one for our son’s room. (He now shares the basement apartment with her, but his room has no smell – it was recently renovated with new walls, floors and free standing closet units. Don’t feel too bad for our daughter: his room is much smaller than hers – so this feels fair to them.)

3. Remove musty items, if you can

• If you can, get rid of old rugs and curtains. (If it’s wall to wall carpet don’t do this: you will need your landlord’s permission first.)
• Mold loves fabrics.  When damp air gets into the dark folds of material molds thrive.  Go through your closets, cupboards and dressers and get rid of any fabric things you can.
• Pay special attention to old pillows and blankets and old clothing you don’t wear.  They are favourite places for moulds – so get rid of them if the smell doesn’t come out with washing.

4. Clean the source

• Clean carpets and walls.
• A great cleaner is also very simple: one part vinegar to 3 parts water.
• For mold you can see you’ll need more than just vinegar. A bleach mixture is nescessary: 1 cup bleach with 4 cups water works well. Never mix bleach with ammonia – this makes a deadly gas. Home Depot has a good overview on how to clean up mold on different surfaces in various places.

6. Use the sun

• The sun is an AMAZING fabric refresher.  On a dry sunny day, consider dragging some of your things outside.
• At our weekend place we’ve put our mattresses and sofa cushions outside in the sun and smelled great results! 
• Be sure to prop things up somewhere dry – not on the ground where they’ll soak up more moisture. We prop things up with chairs and picnic tables with great result.

7. Freshen your air naturally

• When the weather allows, open the windows and let that fresh air in.
• This isn’t the thing to do on rainy days though – on those super humid days keep the windows closed if you can so more wet air doesn’t invade.

8. Use fans to circulate air

• Always use exhaust fans in bathroom and over your stove, if you have them. They will pull the moist air out before it settles in your apartment.
• Just like a windy day, moving air from fans will help dry things out. Our daughter runs a tabletop one in her bedroom to help move air to the air purifier etc.

8. Be vigilant of wet or damp fabrics

• Hang up wet towels right away.
  • Consider getting a freestanding towel rack like this one if you only have hooks or not enough towel bars. This worked for us at our home – the hooks for the kids’ towels just weren’t letting them get dry and they didn’t smell good.

9. Resist the temptation to cover the smell with sprays etc

• Advertisers will have you believe that scented sprays will solve your problem. They won’t. They will just make a weird new smell that’s musty mixed with flowers or whatever. Not better, just different.
• Febreeze comes in an unscented option and it’s the only one we buy. But it’s just a short term stop-gap solution. The other ideas above are much more effective.

Any questions? Please ask them below!

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