Free Things Stink!

Right before Christmas, we went caroling around our neighborhood with Amanda's family who was visiting and a couple friends of ours. One of the houses we sang at was trying to get rid of a 10 foot tall fake ficus tree. Well, fake trees aren't cheap and we have plenty of room in our new house to fill, so we gladly and gratefully took it off their hands. That is until we woke up the next morning and the room that we put it in (our rec room) smelled like a big ashtray!

So the old couple were stinky smokers! I guess it was so cold on that December evening that our noses were numb and we didn't even notice the rank smell that permeated from it. So now it's sitting on the side of our house, waiting for us to figure out a way to either unstink it or dispose of it.
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Then last weekend we noticed an ad on Craigslist for a free twin mattress. We have been looking for one so we can set up a bed at our old house for staging. There's already a crib in the room, but we would much rather bring the crib over to our new house so Emily won't have to sleep in the pack-and-play any more.

We asked them ahead of time if they were smokers, and they assured us that they weren't. So I picked up the less than stellar looking mattress thinking "who cares if it's not something I would want to sleep on, as long as it retains it shape with a bedspread over it so we can use if for staging. I thought I might have noticed a slight aroma when I was roping it to the roof of our Escape, but I was already committed and maybe it was too faint to really notice.

When I got it home I left it in our garage for a day or two to be certain, and sure enough it reeks! I can't exactly pinpoint the smell, but it's sort of musty, maybe like B.O. or mildew.
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For the stinky trifecta, the outside of my building at work smells like a fish factory! At first I thought it was a nearby restaurant and a strong breeze, until the smell continued for several days. Then I finally realized that it's the white flowers blooming on all of the numerous trees in front of the building. There are dozens of them, so it looks beautiful, but unfortunately their smell is pretty disgusting.