What’s That Smell?

Our house developed an odor a few days ago.  With a houseful of children and living downstream from what we affectionately refer to as the “poo poo plant”, unpleasant smells are not unusual.  But they usually disappear after several minutes, so we ignore them and carry on.

This smell however, lingered.

I could best describe it as smelling like a litter box.  Sort of like urine and plastic mixed together.  It was confined to the upstairs, specifically the hallway.

We attempted to sniff out the culprit, with no luck.  The likely suspect was the bathroom even though it is cleaned regularly.

Around bedtime, my husband finally decided that it was the children’s laundry.  Nobody would admit to having an accident and throwing the soiled clothing into the hamper. We brought the hamper downstairs to be sorted and washed the next morning.

The smell was fainter upstairs but still there.

After breakfast the next morning, Boo got to work on the laundry.  He called out, “Mama, I figured out what the smell is!  It’s my socks!”

Now Boo is only 10 and he does not have smelly feet.  I couldn’t imagine that his socks could possibly be the cause of the stink.

He dove back into the hamper and declared, “Oh yeah, it’s my socks!”

Now by this time it was no longer an unpleasant odor but an offensive stench.

“Dude,” I said.  (I have found that boys respond best when addressed as “Dude”.) “Dude, what in the world did you do to your socks to make that smell?”

He knew exactly what he did – last weekend he’d had a water gun fight with his friends and had gotten soaked, his socks particularly.  When he changed his clothes, he threw them all into the hamper where they fermented under more dirty clothes for a week.

I have to give the boy credit.  He didn’t leave his wet socks on the floor of his room.  No, he put them into the hamper like he’s supposed to.  Sadly, had they ended up on the floor, they would have dried instead of stinking up the place.

You’ll be glad to know that all of the laundry is now clean and sweet smelling.

Life with boys – never a dull moment!

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