Surely you’ve noticed how everyone’s house - except yours - has a particular ambient scent. Grandma’s house smells kinda like mothballs and Comet cleaner, Raj’s house smells like curry, and your brother and sister-in-laws house smells not dissimilar to a locker room.
We just got back from vacation and discovered [gasp!] OUR house has its own particular smell too! Anyone else ever encounter this?
Yeah. I’m Indian so clearly my house must reek of curry too. :rolleyes:
Seriously, though, I get what you mean. Mine doesn’t smell like Indian food, since we almost never cook it (why? there’s like ten restaurants around that make delicious food). It would probably smell like a combination of the powder we use to dust the carpets and us…plus a little dust since we don’t dust nearly often enough.
Yes. Our house had a vague wood-shaving smell, even five years after we finished remodeling it. All hardwood floors, I guess.
My next door neighbor is 88 and her house smells like wet dog. In the 38 years I’ve lived next to her, she’s had 4 dogs and has never had the carpets cleaned…
Yes, you can only smell your own house smell when you come home from a vacation.
I hoped my house would smell better then it did. It has elements of litter box and slightly damp cement basement.
Another thing that occurs to me while pondering this whole ‘house scent’ question is that while we have lots of adjectives to describe various sights and sounds, we have a rather limited lexicon where aromas are concerned. A lot of time smells just don’t have specific words to go with them, and even when there are specific words available they’re often inadequate to describe subtly nuanced differences in type or intensity of odor.
I’ve always heard it referred to as “nest odor”. But yeah, I’ve noticed it.
We didn’t realize until after we were moving in to this house that it had areek if feet and cooking grease. I still have no idea how they covered it up when we were looking at it.
After pulling the carpet and pad out, and priming and painting everything, I was desperately nervous the first time I came home after being gone for a few days. Does my house smell like feet and grease??
Nope. Wood smoke, vanilla candles, shower gel, dog…but clean dog.
This is the issue I would have in trying to describe my house. It’s a very natural smell. You get a little bit of onions and grease around the kitchen. The rest is sort of an earth and plant smell, probably because we have lots of potted plants around the house, keep a nice gardens outside and rarely close our windows all the way. (Lots of potted plants may be a relative term, but there’s one in every room we use regularly and you pass three just coming in the door.) We don’t use air fresheners and we a daily cleaning is usually just a damp rag, so not lots of perfumed chemical products either.
duplicate
Check your blinds. If they are really old and haven’t been cleaned then they have a layer of dust and grime on them. When the sun hits the blinds and heats up the grime, well there’s a lot of surface area and that will cause some orders.
That pretty much describes my house, alas. Plus some weirdly seasonal old-house smells that I’ve never quite been able to identify. Probably a few ameliorating elements of woodsmoke and coffee in there as well.
I love the smell of curry, so lucky you 
My room has a faint perfume-y smell to it, the rest tends to smell mostly clean, a bit girly (daughter and I both like scented lotions and stuff).
My Grandma’s apartment used to smell like Cover Girl face powder and Jean Nate body splash. Once I dropped an expensive bottle of perfume in my room (Samsara) and my entire house smelled reminiscent of a French bordello. When we moved, you could still faintly smell it upstairs.
Mine smells like victory!
For 20 years after my dad (who was a heavy smoker) died, I could still smell smoke at mom’s house.
I don’t usually notice a smell in my house unless I’ve been cooking with garlic, which will linger for several days.
My first recollection of a house smell was when I was about 4, a Mrs. Fleming’s house smelled like hard red candies. My grandmother’s house smelled like Milwaukee public water, ca. 1945, to a child who did not live in Milwaukee. I always associate that smell with the word Milwaukee.
If I walk into a house that smells like a Glade Plugin, I want to put a surgical mask over my face.
Whenever I return home from vacation I am surprised at how clean our house smells. I can’t take credit for it though - we live in a developing country and therefore employ maids, so this is to their credit, not mine.
My Aunt has a cottage on Lake Wisconsin. I have been going to this cottage since 1966. Now as an adult, the first thing I do after opening the back door is to run downstairs and open the basement door and take a big whiff. Ahh, that pleasant smell of dust and dampness {must be a type of mold}. The scent brings me immediately back to my youth. Then I go up the back stairs to the sun porch and take in another big whiff. Ahh, the smell of old books Nancy Drew, Alfred Hitchcock etc. from the 1950’s {still on the shelves} and warmed up dust.
My wife thinks I’m weird…
Plus, I also make sure that the old white Frigidaire is still there in the basement. I then open it to make sure the inside is still bright pink
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Sometimes, when I get back from the gym, especially if I’ve done a lot of cardio, the first thing I’ll say to myself as I walk into the door is… “Oops! Time to clean the litter box.”
I guess there must be something about a good cardio workout that really opens up the sinuses.
I was at my mother’s for a week, and was pleased when I got home to find out that our place does not reek of cat litter.