I can’t locate the source, and it seems to move around. Does anyone have any ideas as to what to do about it? It does seem to be in the area of the dishwasher, but that thing’s sealed pretty tight.
If it doesn’t go away, I’ll call Maintenance tomorrow.
Did you try taking the garbage out?
I know, sounds stupid, but it’s a good starting point. Take the garbage out and wait a few hours. If the smell is still there, see if it’s coming from the sink drain.
I took the garbage out, and it’s not coming from the sink drain.
I’ve never seen mice here; I do have 2 cats, but I don’t think they would know what to do if they saw any.
Moving around?? 
Apropos of nothing I guess but I detected a Smell of Death in my DH’s den once and asked him tactfully “WTH stinks in here??” He blamed the cat of course.
One day when he was gone, I let myself into the Inner Sanctum and did some nosing around. My nose led me to his tossed-aside gym bag with an ancient rotten ham and cheese sandwich in it. The thing was SLIMY with mold and smelled like the pit of hell. Is this the smell you detect? Its usually food-related, esp in the kitchen.
I’ve thoroughly inspected the refrigerator, even though the smell is coming from the other side of the room. Nothing wrong there, either.
I have a scented candle in a jar open (but not lit) right now. It’s helping somewhat.
When you put things in the dishwasher, food can spill on the part of the door that isn’t sealed in. So take a good look around the edge of the dishwasher door and see if you don’t have a biology experiment brewing there.
Things you can try:
Run the dishwasher empty with half a cup of bleach and no dishwasher soap.
Rinse out your garbage pail with bleach and water and spray it with Lysol when it’s dry before you put in the liner bag. Spray the inside of the liner bag with Lysol, too.
Clean out your sink drain and disposer by pouring in a cup of baking soda followed by a few cups of white vinegar.
Keep a large bowl of white vinegar on the counter. This does an amazing job of killing foul odors.
Good luck and let us know what happens.
And if all else fails, just keep lighting those candles!
The main way to find it is to sniff around everywhere you can to see if you can find the concentrated smell… hence the source
So remove drawers and stick your head into every hole.
Whats creating the smell ?
sewer … could be bubbling through the S bend, or coming from a leak ?(where gas or liquid leaks out… )
Wet building materials ?
Vermin infestation - cockroaches, rats, mice, etc . Living (urinating) or dying
Your own food … Something may be bad . Or it may be edible, just giving off a bad smell. Did you spill butter somewhere ? A housekeeper (when we lived in a service apartments for a month ) had the bright idea of using potato to polish the windows… stops streaking. But it does build up and start to smell of rotten potato.
Are you on the ground floor? What’s under the kitchen? If it’s a crawl space there could be a dead animal under there. If there’s an apartment below you it could be a dead mouse between your floor and the downstairs ceiling.
I had a bad smell in a spare bedroom, turned out to be a dead rat that had got under a wardrobe after the cat had brought it in. Try looking under stuff in the kitchen, a mouse could have sneaked in and died under the sink or stove.
Beyond the other suggestions, where is the heat/ac vent in your kitchen? I had a horrible smell in my master bath that seemed to emanate from the tub. Turned out to be from the ceiling vent. The duct wasn’t level, and water had collected in a dip and stagnated. The odor was awful, like sewage gas.
Look in cabinets for any food that could have spoiled and split open its packaging.
Do you keep wash rags, used dish towels, or even pot holders in the kitchen? Give them the sniff test. I wash ours frequently.
Since it moves around, the smell might be you. How long since you bathed?
Lots of good advice coming your way from everyone.
I had the same problem (yes, I was freshly showered), and it was my dishwasher.
The type of dw detergent that I used came in a capsule type form and the outer shell did not totally dissolve and it stunk.
I threw in a quarter cup of vinegar and put the washer through it’s cycle (no dishes were in it) and voila - problem solved.
Sure it isn’t a potato? In my kitchen it’s always a potato. It does not smell like anything of vegetable origin should smell, and they roll.
So, what’s it smell like? Mold? Wet wood? Low tide in the salt marsh?
My money is on “dead mouse behind dishwasher”, but we don’t have a lot to go on here.
Have the cats been spending lots of time in the kitchen glaring at an appliance? That’s how I (should have) discovered the mouse nest under the stove.
I used the vinegar/baking soda treatment in the sinks last night, and that seems to have done the job (for now, anyway). I didn’t detect any odor coming from the sinks, but maybe its source was farther down.
If you use a small bowl with cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap, you also kill all the fruit flies infesting your kitchen.
You might want to get your stack pipes checked for any blockage if your are in the northern hemisphere. Any blockage can freeze solid and cause nasty vapor backflow.
To maintain your pipes, plunge every sink and tub vigorously every quarter or so, then rinse a quarter cup of baking soda down the drain with distilled white vinegar.