The night of the stinking socks
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- May 6, 2025
- 31
Every now and then, even the very best houses will develop bad breath. Housitosis is unpleasant for the homeowners and very embarrassing for the houses. Fortunately, it’s usually a temporary problem, such as mildew, dry rot, wet rot or the dreaded something-died-within-the-walls.
Houses, like people, prefer smelling good to smelling bad. The fragrance of fresh flowers, simmering potpourri and baking bread are considered good smells while the fragrance of frying fish, eau-de-litter box and odor of sneakers vie for top place on the bad smell list.
The problem is houses hoard odors. The most heavenly of scents can become offensive if allowed to linger too long. The savory scent of frying bacon is a good example. First thing in the morning, it smells delicious; by afternoon it’s dreadful!
An acrid hint of wood smoke was detectable in one of our houses for years. The fireplace smoked one time, and that house never forgot it. Another house was left alone with a wet towel in the bathroom for a week. The resulting sour stench hung around that place for months.
The worst case ever recorded afflicted my childhood home. The contributing factors were a small boy, my brother, a pair of gym socks and a radiator. Old-fashioned tennis shoes, the black high-top ones with rubber circles on the sides, were infamous for their ability to generate noxious fumes. And most of those fumes were absorbed by the socks. Small boys usually put their dirty socks anywhere but in the laundry hamper. My brother stashed his behind the radiator in his room.
One night it turned very cold. The furnace came on, and the radiators got hot. Encouraged by the heat, the hidden socks released their stored stink in a disgustingly obsequious cloud that crawled, creature-like, from room to room. It lay upon the floors, clung to the walls and crept across the ceilings, wrapping everything and everyone in its gaseous coils.
That night witnessed the most offensive olfactory event ever recorded in the history of houses. It was housitosis on a monumental scale!
Laura Moore can be emailed at lehmoore1@gmail.com.