I’ve heard that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory and I believe it. A little whiff of my high school perfume takes me back in time. And what about the basics? Frasier fir is Christmas. Vanilla is a batch of my mom’s cookies. They don’t make scented candles for nothing! They conjure up something happy.

But what if the connotation isn’t so pleasant? What if your house has a kind of…odor? Chances are your olfactory system has been trained to tune it out. But other people notice. In fact, 80 percent of people say that houses have “a smell.” Glad, Febreeze and countless others have made a business of making “the smell” pleasant. But some odors are stronger than others and can’t be masked.

If you own pets, have little ones or smoke, you are at a much higher risk for stinky carpet. Smells like urine or cigarette smoke are absorbed and re-released. If that’s the case, replacing your current carpet with Magic Fresh could make a huge difference in your home.

It acts much the same way as baking soda in the fridge. It pulls in odors and cleans them, so all that comes back out is odor-free CO2. How cool is that? Magic Fresh says the odor protection last for about 10 years, or 5 professional cleanings.

I was mildly skeptical about how effective this stuff could be, but I am here to tell you that the technology works. We’ve had several customers who had tried everything to get the smoke smell out of their house. This last resort should have been their first! It literally eats the smell.

Renee LeCroy is the Flooring Expert at Don’s Carpet One in Birmingham, AL. For 17 years, she’s been the consumer’s in-store advocate, decoding the flooring industry and offering insider advice. Contact Renee via email.