I have just returned from my family reunion. It went well. Everyone had fun and we all had some good bonding time. The location was a set of storefronts that had been turned into a reunion center. The downstairs contained a rec room, an ice cream shoppe, a bunk room, and a living room area. Upstairs contained a kitchen, a dining area, a TV room, and 8 bedrooms. It was a neat location. Everywhere I looked there were reminders that I was in a small town and that the building was old. I liked that. I liked that the bathroom “locks” were all hook-and-eye arrangements. I liked that the glass was wavy. I liked the big 10 foot wide hallway with doors down the sides which was just begging for a ghost to come floating down it. Not that I actually wanted to see a ghost or be near one. It was just the right setting for one. That effect was greatly enhanced last night when a storm blew through and knocked out the power for about 4 hours. We got to spend the final night of the reunion telling stories and playing games by candlelight. I think that was my favorite part. It was interesting and exciting without actually being dangerous.
This morning we all got up and cleaned for two hours. This particular reunion center keeps prices low by asking that guests clean up after themselves. The cleaning wasn’t hard, but it was tiring. The drive home was made interesting by having to drive an hour down Logan canyon at 5-10 mph because we got stuck behind the truck that was painting new lines on the road. We hit additional traffic near Ogden because of an accident. So our 3 hour drive home was actually 4 hours long.
When we arrived home we discovered that turning off the AC may not be a good idea if you’re going to come home at 4 pm on a 95 degree day. It is definitely not a good idea if you’re going to accidentally leave two catfish fillets on the counter for the three days that you are gone. I suspect that having the AC on would not have helped much, but 90 degrees inside a house full of putrid dead-animal smell was a really unpleasant homecoming.
Febreze Spray is my new favorite cleaning agent. We used clorox and fans. We did all we could to make the smell gone, but hours later it still lingered. Then I grabbed the Febreze Spray and squirted it in the air all over the house. It is magic. It pulled the last putrid molecules out of the air or neutralized them in some way. I like the smell of “I’ve just cleaned” far more than I like “dead animal.”
So now I’m back. Tonight I’ll sleep in my own bed. And tomorrow I’ve got to start getting ready in earnest for the looming start-of-school. One week and counting.
Baking soda, too.
I found Howard’s post about this more amusing… and yours more useful! Thank you for the tip on how to fix the problem with out using friends as air filters…
And that’s the key difference between Sandra and I, in everything from our writing, through our cooking, and into our parenting styles.
She does things to be useful. I do things to be entertaining.
Re: Cleaning agents —
1) Remove the source of the odor. Sadly, we originally thought it was chicken-drippings in the unemptied garbage. The fish wasn’t found for an additional 45 minutes.
2) Okay, the actual source is gone. Hit the spot where it sat, and hit it HARD. The counter was immediately dusted with baking soda, everything adjacent to the fish was thrown away or into the dishwasher, and then the baking soda was wetted with bleach and wiped up. Then the counter was sprayed down and wiped twice with bleach, and twice with our usual disinfecting agent.
3) Fire up the air filter. The Austin Healthmate does a great job at killing all kinds of odors.
At this point most of the smell was gone, but there was a lingering odor that was probably emanating from “infected” surfaces — walls, couches, the stove hood, etc. Febreze spray neutralized this pretty well, though I think I can still smell dead fish somewhere.
(It might just be permanent nerve-damage. Is there such a thing as nasal tinnitus? “Doctor, I have a ringing in my ears, except it’s a stinking in my nose.”)
q>I like the smell of “I’ve just cleaned” far more than I like “dead animal
One more sentence to add to the list of “Things I never expected to say in my lifetime”
Oh… Howard…
Please explain to me the thought process that led you to discover the slightly soggy bag on the counter was the cause…
And if possible, describe the dawning look of horror…
No, it is likely that you really ARE smelling dead fish. There is likely some residual, and the odor did get dissipated throughout, the house will have had little pockets of air that are getting circulated now that there are people moving about.
When I was having my chemical sensitivies diagnosed, one of the infobits we were lectured about was that many air fresheners and cleaners contain stuff to knock back the sense of smell a bit. It is meant to lessen the sensitivity so that you don’t have hints of the undesireable smell sneaking through the nice masking scents that have filled the air. They didn’t freshen the air so much as keep you from smelling what was left in the air, if that makes any sense.
Or so we were told. I dunno how true it is. I do know that when I worked in the taxonomy lab, my sense of smell disappeared for ages. The preservatives in the jars and tray (usually a formaldehyde solution of some type) killed the sense of smell. One of the professors joked about it being the same stuff we’d pay through the nose for — yeah, he was trying to be funny — buying it in an air freshener. (It was an ichthyology lab, and yes I was dumping out buckets and jars of dead fish onto trays to classify, label, re-jar and then log).
So you’ve got some neutralize-the-bad-smell-molecules, some flood-the-air-with-nice-masking-smells, and some kill-sense-of-smell?
Welcome back. That sounds like a grand reunion, and I’ll bet the kids had a blast.
And here’s to a dead-fish-scent-free house 🙂
Vs the smell of dead, rotting fish, I’d take any combination of those three… 🙂
I can sympathize. Once Brandon put a bag of frozen shrimp on a high shelf in the kitchen. (Why, you may ask? It’s a long story, but of course he wasn’t being mean-just forgetful.) This was when Brandon and I were engaged, so he didn’t even live in the house at the time. When my roommates and I come back from a week in California we almost died from the smell. We couldn’t find the source until the next day!
Oh ick. I’ve done the refrigerator-item-in-cupboard thing before, but fortunately I discovered it within 24 hours.