Vile Smell of the Week

I thought it would be fun to start a "blog thing" called Vile Smell of the Week. It's for us domestic goddess blogging types. As we all know, being a home-maker allows us to come across a wide range of olifactory offensiveness in the course of our exciting and very important lives. And we should encourage one another, you know?

So, if you want to participate, please blog about a vile smell in your own home, and then link back to my blog. And post a comment in the comments section of this blog so that I can go and enjoy all the nastiness that other people encounter in the course of their housekeeping.

Here's my vile smell of the week story:

I came in from Church yesterday (the rest of the family had already arrived home and were grabbing a bite to eat-sometimes we drive separately if I'm giving my neighbor a ride) and when I opened the front door and nasty smell hit my nose. Almost like rotting meat, but not quite. How could it be? It's lent.

Was there a dead mouse somewhere in our apartment? We did not know.

"Eeeeeeew, what's that smell? It stinks in here!" Everyone agreed with me and told me they could smell it, too. Rotting, pungeant...bad. Not quite the same sort of bad as a rotting potato (one of the worst!), but right up there in the nasty category, let me tell you. My husband was already washing dishes in hopes of eliminating the odor, and I started bagging up the trash in the living room, although I doubted that junk mail and orange peels could generate such a foul smell.

After a few minutes of putzing around, wondering what the smell was, I walked into the kitchen and leaned against the wall near the shelf where we do things like lacto-ferment sauerkraut, and the like.

Ah. Found it! I'd been giving a bag of dried black beans a three day soak and I forgot about them! Forgot to change the water. Eeeeeeeeeew! They were festering. Vile scumy foam on top of the soaking water. And yes, they smelled like dead meat.

Perhaps that bodes well for the protein content of black beans, but eeeeeeew. I'm sort of off them now, for a while. The very thought turns my stomach.

So, there you have it. What's your Vile Smell of the Week?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Haha! Nice idea. Here's my contribution http://pickledapple.blogspot.com/2010/03/vile-smell-of-week.html

x
Pearl said…
Without question, my vile smell of the week was an airtight box of very cabbagy stirfry which I stuck in the fridge and forgot about. Emptying the box into the kitchen bin caused a truly gag-worthy stench, which is now hovering around our outside bin. Fortunately, the rubbish collection is tomorrow, so the cabbage will be banished. Bleugh.
Cathy Lane RPh said…
My nose is not working right now, probably a hormonal thing. Here is a vile smell memory. Burning rubber baby bottle nipples (when I'd forgotten the pan on the stove as the water boiled off when sterilizing them). Seems like the common theme so far is bacterial or heat-caused acceleration of breakdown of sulfur-containing compounds to release hydrogen sulfide gas. Eww nasty.

(It was one of those 'aluminum clad' pots and the aluminum melted in dropped into the stove workings in big silver 'kisses'.)
John Nicholas said…
It has been 37 years, but I will never forget the gut churning, gag-a-maggot smell of the slimey,rotten cabbage I had to shovel up and dispose of in the backroom of the Kroger Store I was working at. Yuck!
Anonymous said…
This is not my own original contribution, but funny how the next blog I read after yours this morning was the following:

http://downhillbothways.com/2010/03/08/the-attack-of-the-killer-bus-stench/

Thank goodness the internet doesn't have Smell-O-Vision.
Anonymous said…
This isn't my own original contribution, but funny how the next blog I read after yours was the following:

http://downhillbothways.com/2010/03/08/the-attack-of-the-killer-bus-stench/

Thank goodness the internet doesn't have Smell-O-Vision!
Anonymous said…
Oops, very sorry about the double post.
Shelley said…
How about old shrimp shells? Oh, I know the best: when my younger brother and I were about 5 and 6, we were watching my mom cut the heads off the smelt she was going to cook for dinner. How cool are fish heads! We wrapped them in a paper napkin and saved them in our dresser drawer!
Bohemimom said…
The other day a wierd acidy smell seemed to be following me around all day. Then when I went to change clothes I realized that I have been puked on without realizing it. My one year old is going through a phase where he thinks its funny to gag himself until he pukes. He actually giggles when it happens. Yay for one year olds!
The rubber drain thing that covers the garbage disposal hole in the sink is covered with grime on the underside.

I can't describe the stench: kinda like acidic, fetid water.

Luckily, the stench isn't noticeable if you are just standing at the sink. You have to pop out the drain thing and look at the underside to see and smell the grime.

I don't know how I'll clean the thing... Maybe drop it into a bucket of bleach?
Anonymous said…
We had relative in town. My son gave up his bed and slept his sleeping bag. He wet the bed (never done that before) an rolled up the sleeping bag and put it away.

Found it... ACK!