What is the smell in my apartment?

Factual Questions
1

Maybe this would be better in the IMHO forum, because I’m not sure a factual answer will be forthcoming. But hope springs eternal.

There is a smell localized in one small part of my apartment. The apartment’s laid out a bit like a townhouse, with a small entrance foyer and, immediately, a staircase to the second floor, where the rooms of the apartment are. On the ground floor, apart from the staircase there is a closet, a laundry room, and a garage (all these are behind doors). There’s a basement underneath.

From the moment I enter the door to about halfway up the stairs, I smell an aroma something like garbage. But there’s nothing there – the smell disappears in the garage, closet, laundry room, basement, upstairs, and on the outside of the building. It’s only in the stairwell. It doesn’t seem to be something under the staircase, either. The smell floats in the air and diminishes when you get closer to the floor or walls.

What kind of smell just floats in air, and disappears when I sniff toward any apparent source (walls, floor, under staircase, in garage, etc.)? It’s been around for at least 3 days; I was out of town when my wife first noticed it over the weekend. The weather in Seattle has been relatively warm, but nothing unusual.

Maybe a small animal crawled in somewhere and died, but the smell is constant, not getting any worse. Not unbearably rotten, just kinda garbage-y.

Anyone ever had a mystery smell like this? Any insights? Is my house haunted? Facts, anecdotes, or opinions welcome.

Thanks in advance,
E.

2

Sounds like a dead mouse in the walls.

3

Have you seen all of your neighbors recently, say, in the last 24 hours?

4

Well, my wife claims our landlords (who live next door) are “out of town.” Should I sleep with one eye open?

More seriously (but naively): what does one do if there’s a dead mouse in the wall?

5

In my experience, nothing. There’s not a lot of meat on a mouse’s bones, so they either rot or dessicate fairly quickly. If it’s a rat, it might take a little longer for the smell to go away, just because a rat is that much bigger than a mouse.

6

Send a cat in after it.

7

Make sure all of your drain traps have water in them…

8

If it’s strong, not exactly bad , but ‘musky’ - yup, it’s a mouse. How about spraying the baseboard and wall with Lysol, Febreze, etc. It will go away shortly. The only problem is, what I remember the exterminator told me during my infestation, hungry mice are attracted to the smell of…dead mouse. So unless u wanna see some cannabalistic tableau, *a la * the Donner party, cover up the smell with something, like mouse repellent.

9

Here again, I recommend using a mineral called “zeolite.” Get a bag of it at a health food or pet store and hang it up. It will take the smell of anything out of anything.

10

Including basement floor drains, if any. We get a similar fragrance in our house occasionally, and pouring a little water into the floor drain takes care of it. It also is a “floating” odor with no recognizable source.

11

Do you have a welcome mat in your foyer?
Maybe you tracked something into the house unknowingly and it’s now in the door mat.
Or do you have any pets?
Unknown to us our dog would piss on the welcome mat in the middle of the night and it would dry without a trace by morning. The mix of urine and the rubber mat smelled like garbage.

12

No pets; no welcome mat.

The smell has been a bit fainter over the last day, so maybe the problem will just disappear. If not, I appreciate all the good suggestions so far and will try some out.

13

I’ve found that smells can travel far and use strange routes to get there.

I once thought I had a natural gas leak in my house at the back. Since the gas meter was at a back corner, I called the gas company which brought out a very sensitive sniffer and we went all around the meter and gas lines but found nothing that registered. Still I kept getting light whiffs of the smell sometimes in the summer.

Then I found a leaking garden concentrate (petroleum based) bug spray container high in an inside closet near the back door. Removing and discarding it got rid of the smell permanently.

So the smell travelled around two corners, hugging the wall, for at least 20 feet before dissipating. That kind of path makes it hard to trace back to the source.

14

Is there any possibility that some part of this space could have flooded recently? Could there be some carpeted spot where the pad underneath is wet?

15

We have a rug in the living room (not close to the smell) but no carpeting; the foyer and stairs are bare floor. With the earlier posts about wandering smells, though, I wonder if there isn’t some lurking wetness around. Will check.