What's That Smell?

First things first - thanks for all the comments on the last entry which made me not feel so completely horrible about the whole situation. I talked to Aaron about it and he said he knows that I'm not Alex's biggest fan but he's glad I invited him. Well, there was a much longer conversation involved, but that's the gist of it.

Now for the "What's That Smell?" portion of today's entry:

Yesterday was laundry day at our apartment. We are very lucky in the apartment-laundry situation because we own our own washer and drier and have them hooked up in our very own laundry room. However, they are in the utility room which also houses things like the furnace and water heater and therefore has vents going every-which-way. This means that we often get smells from other apartments in the building in this room (and thankfully only in this room), which is not always a good thing. In fact, it's usually not a good thing, and it definitely was a very, very bad thing yesterday afternoon.

During my first load of laundry, Aaron waked into the laundry room and loudly proclaimed "It stinks in here!", to which I responded "It always stinks in there!". Because it does.

When I walked in to put the clothes into the drier the strong aroma of something poo-like hit me. Aaron didn't think it was nearly that bad, but really? It was that bad. The people next to us and the people below them have diaper-aged kids, so maybe their diaper pail is in their utility room. Who knows. What I do know is that it was horrible.

About two loads later (I did a total of 4 loads of laundry yesterday and folded it all and put it all away - yay me!) I walked in to what smelled like a broccoli farm. Not quite as bad, but definitely not what I'd characterize as "good". I don't know if it was just the smell from before mixed with the smell of fabric softener or what, but I had to hold my breath to keep from gagging a couple of times.

Later on that night when it was Aaron's turn to do his laundry (because we do our laundry separately because apparently I do it wrong) the smell had morphed into more of a garlic/laundry detergent smell which was equally as unpleasant as the previous two. It was then decided that we have to figure out what to do about these smells.

I proposed an air freshener, but Aaron quite rightly pointed out that it might just make it an even more unpleasant bouquet of smells if we just add something to it. He didn't really have any other ideas though, so it may be what we try. I think we're just going to have to chalk it up to living in an apartment and deal with it until we get off our asses and buy a house. Unfortunately that's just over a year away (in our planned budget which could still go totally awry because I could so use a tropical vacation!) so until then I guess I'll just have to hope that it doesn't get so strong that it escapes the laundry room.