Romoving bad odor

[fan-of-fans]

Last weekend I had an item of clothing that got very wet. Somehow it fell on the floor under the bed, and I had forgotten about it in the busyness of the weekend. By the middle of the week, I noticed a horrible smell around the bedroom and could not figure out what in the world it was. I looked and looked and finally found the very smelly item of clothing under the bed, which seemed to be the source. I removed the offending item and opened the bedroom windows with a fan running most of the day. The smell is not nearly as strong but I can still smell it faintly, and I haven't closed the windows yet.

How to get rid of this odor? And I'm not sure why the clothing got to smelling so bad, but the only thing I can think is the air conditioner hasn't been turning on because of the chillier weather, but not cool enough for the heat to run. So the air in the house has been very stagnant and probably moist.

 

[yogitunes]

usually a pan of 50/50 water and ammonia, prefer the lemon scent, will get rid of most odors.....

what type of flooring was the garment on?....if it was linoleum, that would be a safe bet to wash with the same solution.....

other items like Febreeze, or Lysol, or even pine-sol would help.....

you have to think, that offending odor has probably seeped into other surroundings and bedding......

 

[stan]

Vinegar

Might work?

 

[eronie]

bad odor

What you have is mold / mildue that has transferd to the carpet / flooring.
It's a growth so you must KILL it. Or the odor will return.
Solid surface flooring use weak bleach solution then rinse.
Carpet try Lysol spray disinfectant. If that doesn't work try hot water / steam extraction carpet cleaner.
Good luck.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

2 more thoughts:

Tea tree oil kills a lot of micro-organisms. I'd google something like "clean with tea tree oil"+ the materials affected. You'll get a million hits but usually it amounts to adding some to whatever other cleaner you're using. I go with the majority opinion on exact technique.

Alcohol, 91 or 99%. I used this on some leather sandals that had gotten soaked with moldy (and lord knows what else!), stagnant water. Alcohol did the trick. Several sites mentioned that it is actually the WATER in 50-70% alcohol that damages leather and other items.

As always, there's usually no harm in applying different cleaning methods in sequence, with full drying in between. I'd probably avoid bleach and ammonia methods back to back, though

Hope this helps,

Jim