I have a friend exactly like this, except her whole family was like that since I’ve known her. Their house has literally not been cleaned in 20 years, and it looks (and smells) beyond your imagination. It’s one of those houses that should be featured on 20/20 about people who have OCD for being messy. Some of the neighbors have tried to get the health department involved since there are still little kids in her family, but they won’t touch the situation since it’s private property. But I digress.
I literally can’t describe the smell her parents’ house has – and now her own house had – except that it’s probably mold. She carries the smell on herself, too, it follows her like a cloud.
I’ve found that everyone’s house has a characteristic smell, just like Holden Caulfield. Must be a combo of pets, cleaning products, cooking habits, fragranced cosmetics (nothing could stink up a house like my dad putting on cologne), chemicals emitted by synthetics in the home, and other random stuff that you characteristically have in your house.
There is a certain ‘smell,’ though, that some people just seem to have … I first noticed it in university rez, when the guy across the hall from me had this smell in his room that I found unbearable - I couldn’t spend any time in there, I had to find somewhere else to talk to him. He still smelled of it, though. Not quite BO, not quite something rotting, not like anything else I’ve smelled … I do have a particularly sensitive sense of smell, it must be said, because I’ve smelled it in other places and no one else seems to notice.
This smell follows certain men, I’ve found: sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker. Must be pheremones: everybody smells like something, right? I once almost fell in love with someone on the bus because of his smell.
You can buy carpet deodorizers that are pretty much just baking soda. They do pretty well. Some you sprinkle on and them vacuum up or you can just get a can that shoots foam on to the carpet that just soaks in and takes up the smell.
Made my place smell much nicer. My cat produces a lot of “material” and the smell sort of builds up.
cowgirl: I know exactly what you mean about certain people, usually men, having an intoxicating smell that can almost make you fall in love with them. Ditto on the way certain guys smell that turns you way off. I once spurned a guy solely based on his smell, and it turned out to be a great decision.
If kitty litterpans are clean and kitties are fastidious, what else would cause a bad kitty smell in the house?
Well, I said dogs, not cats. At one point during my childhood, we had five indoor/outdoor cats, and I don’t remember that affecting the “tone” of the house. (Though the “outdoor” part may have had something to do with it.)