Paint and Onions

With the project of painting the office with both latex and oil based paints, our home has become overwhelmed with fumes.  Everything stinks like oil paint, especially because the door is off the office for painting. 

Opening a few windows can help reduce the smell but the temperatures are too low outside and the oil paint won't dry properly.  So after a few Google searches we (my mom) discovered that putting a dish of chopped onion in the room with paint fumes will help rid the smell.  I couldn't decide what would be worse... paint fumes or onion fumes,  but figured it was worth a shot.

12 hours later, the smell of paint inside our home is close to absent.  There is a slight onion scent, but I'd rather smell that than headache giving oil fumes.  I've now gone through 2 whole onions and our house is close to normal again.

There were two different methods I read for onions and paint smell. 
1. Chop an onion in half and placing in a dish with shallow water. 
2. The other was chopping an onion in to a bunch of pieces and placing in a dish. 

I chose to chop the onion and add some water to dish... Figured combinging the two methods couldn't hurt.  The key is to have a large amount of raw onion exposed and to switch it out when it begins to dry out.

Give it a try the next time you paint inside!