My life stinks. Literally. I am assaulted daily by the malodor of my life. My home emits odiferous breath where there should be none. You will not sense soothing ocean breezes or cinnamon wafting from my Glade Plug In. Far from it. In fact, if you plan to visit, I suggest you bring a clothes pin.
To begin, there is an unholy funk coming from my laundry room. Dirty laundry by definition should smell dirty. Our laundry, however, surpasses all expectations. The first problem is the sheer mass of it. I have a six section sorter and a hamper in the laundry room, but you’d never know it. They are completely buried in a mountain of clothes, which spills over and out the door. Unfortunately, my children have a habit of tossing wet towels anywhere on the pile, which inevitably get buried by more dirty stuff, and begin to stink. However, I consider my self fortunate that they at least now know that laundry goes in the laundry room, not on the floor, hanging off the back of chairs, or even, heaven forbid, behind the couch. I’ll keep working on the towel issue, but I’m keeping the kids, so I guess I own this one for awhile.
The next problem with the laundry room is the cat. I have a 17 year old male cat who has developed some very unpleasant ways of expressing his dissatisfaction. He yowls, and he pees. He pees on laundry. Clean, dirty, he doesn’t discriminate. If his litter box is not just so, or he is not happy with the catch of the day, he will pee on the laundry mountain. If he’s really unhappy, he pees in baskets of clean clothes, which then become peed-on dirty laundry in the laundry room.
You might be thinking, “Close the door, idiot!”, but I can’t. The mountain spills out the door, remember? You should see us pushing and cramming the beast back through the door when we are expecting guests. The laundry, I mean. Not the cat. He’s a pain, but he’s been my friend longer than my husband, and I love him.
Speaking of the cat, there’s a nasty scent that comes with kitties of all ages, which is the litter box. We have two kitties, hence twice the volume. The old guy is showing his age, drinking more, which means peeing more, and his poops have developed a truly pungent aroma that is almost visible in its intensity. I can tell immediately when I walk in the door if there’s a Boo-Boo poop in the box. But we’ve discussed that; he’s old, and he’s staying.
My son, on the other hand, is only 10. He’s very athletic, and just at that age where his body is starting to produce new things, like BO. Holy Crap, that kid reeks! He’s got the kind of BO that snakes out from him in a hostile coil of invisible gas that both clings and spreads at the same time. After soccer practice, I usually have to open the car windows and run the air conditioner full blast just to get home without suffering brain damage. I know, I know, deodorant is the key, but try to get that into a 10 year old’s head! He just doesn’t get it, or care, that if you use deodorant after taking a shower at night, you still need to put it on again in the morning! And if you used it yesterday morning, it’s not going to tide you over until the weekend! He’ll figure it out when he starts noticing girls, and realizes they don’t like boy stink. But in the meantime, he’s my smelly guy, and like the cat, he’s staying.
So you can see that there really is no quick and easy solution to these problems. I’m not getting rid of the cats, or the kids, or my husband, whose own particular brand of rankness doesn’t make for good story telling. I love them all, and so here we are in one big, happy, reeking group hug of rancidness. Because, like the song says, love stinks. Yeah, yeah.