Please help me figure out why my house smells

[lompla]

My house stinks. It's so embarrassing, I have to light multiple wax melts before someone comes over.

I have a dog but she's bathed/groomed regularly and not allowed on the sofas. I cleaned my carpets less than six months ago with enzyme cleaner and an industrial sized carpet cleaner.

I don't smoke or vape, shower at least once a day.

Every room smells, and it's not the same smell in each one. I open the windows every day, use plug ins and diffusers. Air fresheners. No dirty washing lying about. Bedding is changed weekly, I'm not great at cleaning but I do keep things relatively clean and tidy.

It smells as soon as you step in the house.

It's really getting me down! I'm worried that mine and DS must smell, or at least our clothes, as this is where we spend most of our time.

It also obviously puts me off from having guests.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Can you describe the smell? Have you tried a dehumidifier in case it is a damp smell?
Also carpets might be smelly if they didn't dry quickly enough, you could try get a pro in to do the carpets and then also get a dehumidifier

Is it a cooking smell? Do you fry a lot of food?

I’ve noticed mine smelling stale recently and it’s because it’s the winter and the windows have been shut. Keep them open a crack all day - it must need airing

im now sleeping with mine open and have opened strategic windows in various places to freshen the place up

Mine too! Hits you as you walk in. Not every room but the living room. Cats trays and poop smells. And a bit doggy. Haven’t got a dog. No windows to air the cats trays.
vomit smell on stairs. Trying to deal with that at the moment.
awful smell in daughters room like unclean people. She hoards dirty clothing and I’m too exhausted to clean her room regularly as I should.

I really don't know how to describe it. It's a different smell downstairs, than it is to upstairs. Maybe stale/sour? I don't know! Just grim.

I don't really fry a lot of food.

Get a good friend to come in and give you an honest opinion - it might be in your head. Or it might be something obvious that you are too habituated to to work out. My guess is its the dog though

It's definitely not in my head. It's a bad smell, that you can't ignore.

Could be the underlay beneath your carpets is rotting. I've had that with carpet and laminate floor. When I ripped it up I could see the problem immediately. Replaced it all and never had it happen again.

Have you checked under the flooring / behind kitchen and bathroom units to see if it’s damp / mouldy?

I lived in a place that had a quite funky smell and it turned out it was chronic damp and mould.

I would definitely try having your carpets cleaned by a pro then as they will be left drier than when you did them. Make sure they have the proper huge machines, I couldn't believe the size of machine the man brought when he did ours, nothing youncould hire that's for sure. Then also have a dehumidifier running, I always have one running now beside my washing when it is drying. Hope you get to the bottom of it

I should've said, I don't have carpet downstairs. So that wouldn't explain the smell down there.

I'm going to enquire with some professional carpet cleaning companies for upstairs.

It will most likely be the carpet or underlay, or both. Is replacing it in the near future an option at all?

@lompla do you have any flooring at all or is it bare concrete? My hallway was sodden when we lifted the laminate. Years of wet humans and dogs coming through it, it just never dried out fully and the water was trapped underneath so it all rotted under there but couldn't be seen from above.

How do you dry washing OP?

My parent's don't use a tumble dryer, just an airer or over radiators. But it doesn't dry quickly enough and they end up with that awful damp sour smell similar to what you're describing.

Also it doesn't help that they've cut right down on heating last year, at which point I noticed it became a lot worse, so maybe it's slight dampness too.

Do you have a neighbour that hasn't been seen around for a few weeks?

Dead bird in an old blocked off chimney?

Intact dog territory marking when you aren't looking?

Dead something (rat/squirrel etc) in the attic?

Do you have dead mice behind the skirting boards?

Ooh another one, I don't know if this is in my head, but I think a lot of artificial fragrances (diffusers, plug in, melts etc) can smell a bit funny after a while if they're not aired out. It's like they go stale? Not sure if that's the smell you're perceiving?

It'll be the carpets - horrible bloody things.

What flooring do you have?

Still could be something rotting or damp under whatever you have.

People often just layer flooring up!

I was about to say the same. Our underlay was really holding onto smells.

A dead rat under the floorboards smells terrible. A friend had this, but after a few months the smell went away.

Can you totally trust your dog as house-trained? Perhaps he doesn't bother to go out and has a secret place hidden in the house?

The traps might have dried out in your bath/shower/basin. Worth running the water in each for 5+ minutes and flushing the loos to see if it helps. It's quite a particular smell - not sewage but maybe rotten eggs? Dead vermin in beams/loft too potentially...

Sympathies

Ours always smells of cooking, curry, onions, fish.

Nice

And we dont have an extractor fan so no way of avoiding it

And my coats often smell of it as they hang in the hall, its not always practical to shut the kitchen door.

But just in case, are you sure its your house and not your nose. I suffer with that imaginary smell thing too so its difficult sometimes to work out if its me or an actual smell I can smell

The most likely cause is mold. It can grow behind plaster board, behind tiles, under laminate/wood floors. Behind furniture (never push anything up against a wall, always leave a gap).

Air fresheners, wax melts, diffusers they perfume by putting oils into the air which settle and then can go rancid. So this may be making the smell worse.

The same for fabric softners, febreeze.

Any old plastic light fittings? They can give off a smelly like rotting fish.