The Stinky Handbag Chronicles: Part One

While shopping at a local thrift store recently, I came across this awesome mustard colored leather handbag. It is super minimalist, and by folding it in half you can make the tote an instant clutch, so it’s two bags in one!

Somehow, perhaps because of the mix of other unpleasant thrift store odors, or maybe due to subconscious denial caused by my excitement, I failed to notice that the dream bag smelled like an ash tray. No, make that 30 ash trays. Once I got in my car all I could think was “what a deal!” and “what is that smell?”

Although my sister and boyfriend were horrified that I was not going to return the bag, I decided to keep it and use it as an experiment in how to remove odors from vintage leather. My initial go to was Febreeze, which I covered the nylon lining of the bag with as soon as I got home. The next morning after it had dried, I had a fresh floral and cigarette scented bag.

Since the Febreeze was useless in this case, I spent few weeks researching different methods of varying strangeness to remove odors from leather. I wanted to do as little to the bag as possible so that I did not damage it in any way while trying to make it smell better; so when I read about using baking soda, it seemed to be the perfect solution. I placed the stinky bag in a pillow case and filled it with about a half of a box of loose baking soda. Following the instructions I found, I left the pillowcase overnight. When I checked it the next day, nothing had changed, so I sealed it back up and left it for a week.

Baking soda; the be all and end all of odor removers, right? Wrong. The baking soda method took only a tiny bit of the smell away. All that waiting and I still have a smelly leather bag that I can't even use without people asking me if I smoke; gross.

I refuse give up, I like this bag way too much. Now I am determined to find out how to get this odor out! I have a few more tricks I'd like to try, but if you have any tips or ideas please share them! Stay tuned for part two...

• Read more about the methods that I used to remove odors from leather