There Is Something Foul In The Air...

Have you ever experienced a smell where you have not been able to pinpoint what it was or where it was specifically coming from? Until yesterday I had been experiencing that very issue for three long weeks.  Every time I'd walk in to our laundry room I'd occasionally get a sporadic whiff of something unpleasant.  I'd interrupt A.J. at work in his office and ask if he was able to smell what I was smelling.  He never was.  Do you know how frustrating that can be? I cleaned the floors, I sprayed Lysol everywhere, looked for dead mice, etc.  Nothing.  The smell just continued on, and I seemed to be the only one who even smelled it.  This week the odor intensified.  It got to the point where I felt like I might throw up every time I had a chance encounter with the horrid, putrid, rancid, disgusting smell.  You think I'm exaggerating.  Nope.


So yesterday, I was preparing to do a few loads of laundry and the odor invaded my workspace yet again.  This time it seemed even worse.  I asked A.J. again if he could smell it.  This time he could.  Aha! Progress! A.J. said he'd look at our flooring, in the wall behind the washer, and in the washer itself.  While he began dismantling our laundry room, I had to make a quick trip to Target with Ayson.  When I had only gotten a mile away from home A.J. called me proclaiming he found the cause of the smell:  Daffodils.

The pieces of the puzzle came together quickly for me.  This spring A.J. got rid of some flower beds in our back yard   He and Alex dug up well over 100 flower bulbs.  Let me preface that neither A.J. or I have green thumbs - frankly we don't know much about gardening at all.  So anyway, the bulbs were pulled from the damp ground and piled in a plastic target bag and put on a top shelf of a cabinet in our laundry room.  And forgotten.  Over time the bulbs began to rot...seep...and eventually they began floating around in a bath of rot-fluid in the bag.  It was the single most disgusting smell either of us has ever smelled.  A.J. bleached, and bleached, and bleached again, the entire shelving area; and then poured box loads of baking soda over the shelf to eliminate as much of the odor as possible.  We had to move the garbage bag with the bulbs in it outside because the smell was so strong that it was making even the garage unbearable (I feel very badly that the garbage men will even have to handle the bag).  Thankfully today the smell has gotten much better.  But we've learned a very good lesson about what not to do with flower bulbs.  As a matter of fact, I'm thinking we will just stick with perennials from this day forward.