# What is that smell in old people's homes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 24, 2005, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527 "2005-11-24T02:37:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![bizzwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bizzwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizzwire)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/41 "2005-11-26T22:33:42Z")
Could it possibly be good manners, respect, and a disposable income? You know, things the **OP** hasn’t encountered before? ---
**Author:** ![ms.deanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@ms.deanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ms.deanna)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/42 "2005-11-27T05:26:23Z")
Thank You, Bizzwire! You’re my homie! ---
**Author:** ![Obsidian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/51bf81/32.png) [@Obsidian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obsidian)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/43 "2005-11-27T11:36:10Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Now my other gramma, her entire house smells like cigarettes. She’s been smoking all of her life, and she smokes the cheaper ones, and my god, I can only imagine what’ll happen when her house is eventually sold. I wonder how they’ll EVER get that smell out of there. It’s everywhere. I wonder how much of that it is, actually. Many, many people of that generation were, at one time, smokers. It gets into the carpets and walls and as it ages, the scent changes. I think best point was the one made about old things, more than old people. Such as 40+ year old carpet, which certainly has a smell to it. My parents bought their current house from an older woman, and sometimes you open a rarely used closet and still get a wiff-- stale cigarettes, mustiness, and mothballs. My grandpa, once a stage carpenter by trade, continues to love working on his house (at 92, now), and when I go there, it doesn’t smell any different from my house. (Actually, it smells better there because we have cats and a dog, and Grandpa doesn’t) ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/44 "2005-11-27T12:31:11Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > I would imagine that 50 years from now, “old person smell” would be much different than it is now. :eek: I may end up in an Axe infused group facility?! Noooooo!! ---
**Author:** ![Sutremaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@Sutremaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sutremaine)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/45 "2005-11-27T15:43:37Z")
> [@MistahManMistahMan](#): > > Or it could be hormone build ups giving them a gamy smell. They castrate cattle so the meat doesn’t taste gamy. I bet guys with vasectomies don’t smell as bad when they get old as intact guys. :dubious: I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not, but you _do_ know that all a vasectomy does is sever the tube that allows sperm to get from the testicles to the outside world, right? ---
**Author:** ![ninevah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/46a35a/32.png) [@ninevah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninevah)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2005, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/46 "2005-11-30T22:59:45Z")
My fiance’s late grandmother was in a nursing home for many, many years and when we last visited, it smelt like urine. That was pretty much the only description we could attach to the smell. Which isn’t to mean thst the nursing home wasn’t thoroughly cleaned, it was just there were quite a few residents, including my fiance’s grandmother, who had catheters. Which made it smell like urine and possibly worse. But I don’t recall my (maternal) grandparents house as every smelling moth-bally or dusty. My grandmother kept it incredibly clean. It just smelled like a regular house to me. And I still don’t get the fascination that older people have to use mothballs everywhere. It seems to increase in their advancing years. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2005, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527/47 "2005-12-01T00:58:55Z")
> [@Ezstrete](#): > > As one of THEM let me say that the odor [which emanates from your imagination] is,if it exists at all, the product of years of mental and physical labor spent creating,developing and perfecting the toys which the CHILDREN of today somehow feel are Theirs… No, that’s the smell in _elves’_ homes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-that-smell-in-old-peoples-homes/332527.md?page=2)