Six Ways to Tame the Stink Monster

The stink Monster

I do not really have story to share about having guests over and having to battle the stink monster simply because I very rarely formally invite people over…

But there was this time, when I had just returned from an outstation tour, the house smelled musty and damp a little sweet as if it was haunted by the ghosts of long dead cookies, it also had a strange smell that I could not diagnose. As I was in the process of diagnosing this unidentified smell a guest walks in, if it is someone I am familiar with I would just take the person right out the balcony but this person was the formal lounge visitor.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odours of fruits transports me to the ancestral village, the smell of dead fish that wafts with afternoon breeze, takes me back to the town I grew up in, my childhood of mango and cashew trees, the open hillock and the puddles of rain water. There are other odours, instantaneous and fleeting that cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awaking sweet memories of summers and ripening rice fields far away.

It is rather strange, some time back as I went down some place the stench of formaldehyde just wafted by and I felt so comfortable in that zone, the odour that I associated with Manipal anatomy museum and dissection hall, my favourite haunt through my childhood.

Then there have been times, when I have walked into a formal hall, and the place would stink, somehow I would feel compelled to explain that the smell was in there before I went in there. Has that happened to you? actually it’s not your fault, I mean I or you we’re in this process of holding our breath, and just getting out and now we open the door and  have to explain, ”oh! Listen there’s an odour in there and I didn’t do it, it’s bad.”

One can go on and on about Odours and association, but its hands on tackling that is important.

Short Term Odour Management…

• I ensure no undone laundry loiters around.
• I time to finish my cooking an hour and half before my guests arrive.
• A quick vacuuming of gross irritants around and tidying up the place. If time and man power permits mopping, but usually it does not.
• Open all the windows for 15- 20 mnts. This allows the existing stench to go out.
• Now spray the room freshener, if need be shut the windows.

When I am going away for more than a day two.

• Complete packing.
• Tidy the entire house, including running the laundry.
• Dishwashing should be done too… the sink has to be clean.
• Sweep and mop the house with a disinfectant.
• Finally tidying of individual room… shut secure the windows, spray room freshener… shut the door and latch from without.

Every since I discovered this technique I return to a house that does smell of musty moisture and cookie ghosts.

My previous experience with Ambipur

“I am blogging for #SmellyToSmiley activity atBlogAdda.com in association with Ambi Pur

https://parwatisingari.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/smell-of-day-break/

https://parwatisingari.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/bombay-smell/

https://parwatisingari.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/soft-and-warm-sandalwood/