Last week I saw a hack on social media to make your home smell nice that was pretty bad. It involved putting essential oils in your vacuum cleaner, which you should never do. I recommended a few other tips for making your home smell nice instead, but they were all about neutralizing odors, not introducing pleasant scents into the environment. This week, however, social media gave me a new suggestion for making any room smell nice – and this one won’t hurt your vacuum cleaners (or anything else). It involves hiding little scented pads filled with extract around your home.

First, I saw this video from Kelly the Cleaning Girl, a TikTokker who loves to clean and wears pink. I immediately trusted her when she said that you can make your house smell nice by dabbing some extract on a furniture pad and hiding it around your house, but I still had some reservations and wanted to try it out.

My first concern was, “What’s a furniture pad?” I headed to Target, where I found Scotch felt pads, which I realized have an adhesive backing and are meant to go under chair legs to keep them from scratching hardwood floors. (I have carpet; I didn’t know that!) The ones I bought aren’t listed on Target’s site, but they’re comparable to this 32-pack for $4.97.

My second concern was, “Won’t the extract attract bugs?” I checked with Allie Reinmann, Lifehacker’s baking guru, and she said that while extracts are used in food, they themselves contain too much alcohol to be considered a food product. They don’t contain, she said, “any sugar or anything that bacteria can grow in,” so I was sold. She did wonder how long the smell would last, since the extract would likely evaporate quickly, but I assured her I’d find out. I got plain old McCormick pure vanilla extract ($8.39 for two ounces).