Household Scents, Both Good and Bad

When it comes time to sell a house, there are many issues to be addressed to make it attractive to prospective buyers, from curb appeal to functionality of all systems, and realtors are eager to provide advice to guide sellers through the process of “getting ready.”

    But probably the most sensitive issue to address is unpleasant odor in the house.

    Every home has a particular smell. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes not.  When it’s good, we might want to savor it and remember it, but when it’s bad, both we and a prospective buyer want to escape it.

    One of the first times I was keenly aware of objectionable house smells was in the apartment of a very senior woman who had invited me, as an antiques dealer at the time, to buy some of her things.  When I entered her apartment, located in an old former hotel in Brooklyn, I was hit with a smell that was very unpleasant and very hard to describe. 

     The windows were all shrouded in heavy curtains and shades, and the furniture was all deeply tufted.  When she showed me her things, some quite beautiful — I remember old tortoise combs and a ivory-handled mirror — I would ask her how much she wanted for them, and she would give me a particularly low price which she must based on what she had paid in the 1920s. It would have been unconscionable of me to not give her more. Whenever I would offer her two and three times the amount she requested, she would say, “oh,” with delight. She was lovely, but I couldn’t wait to leave the terrible smell of her living environment.

     I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought the smell was coming from what I had heard was called “old people smell,” but that was a wrong assumption.  “There is no such thing as an ‘old people smell,” I was told by Frank Petrullo, owner of Envirocare Air Quality Restoration in Westchester. “It’s the circumstances of the old person’s environment.  There may be closed windows and no air flow, it could be their personal habits, and the odors just don’t have an opportunity to dissipate with circulation.

     “The three most common causes of house odor are smoking, pets and mold,” he continued. “Usually no one does anything about the first two — smoking and pets — because people are not aware of those odors when they live with them. They are very aware of mold, however, either because of the smell or allergic reaction, and that is something they want to do something about.  Toxic mold produces a chemical called mycotoxins which can cause serious illnesses that can be fatal.”

     Pet smell and the odor from smoking may not raise a danger signal as much as toxic mold, but when you think about it, the source of the smoking smell can be very harmful to the one who smokes and the one who breathes in second hand smoke, according to the Surgeon General, and pets can be anathema to those with severe allergies to them. Both smells can be addressed with home remedies when the source moves on, but toxic mold, which is reputed to have hastened the death of Ed McMahon, television personality, should best be handled by a professional remediation service like Envirocare. There is just too much at stake, especially in the remediation process, to approach on one’s own.

      If a house is being readied for sale and the owner is advised to eliminate the smell of smoking or pets, the best cure is good ventilation. The process can be expedited with baking soda, that old standby that we know from our mothers’ placing a box in the refrigerator. Baking soda can be sprinkled on furniture and carpeting that has absorbed smoking or pet odors, and after it sits for several hours, is vacuumed.

    The worst thing to do about household odors, in my opinion, is to try to mask them with candles, incense, or other odor combating products.  The layered smells can be worse than the original offending odor. 

   For those who discover odors in their households, Envirocare can be reached through www.eaqr.com or by calling 914-245-3100.

Bill Primavera is a residential and commercial Realtor® associated with Coldwell Banker, as well as a publicist and journalist writing regularly as The Home Guru. For questions about home maintenance or to buy or sell a home, he can be emailed at Bill@PrimaveraRealEstate.com or called directly at 914-522-2076.