Some households have a grimy smell? What causes it?

[Bronzeacorn]

When I was a teenager I dated a guy and his home house (he lived with his mum and dad) was just grimy, not even particularly messy or cluttered... just badly maintained and never truly clean. Think brown rings on bath/sink grime on every surface. Their house had a smell I can't explain.... its not like a sick to your stomach smell, no animals in the house so not cat wee it was bearable but noticeable.... i can only describe it as greasy?? But I don't even know if that'd the right description.
I recently went into.a neighbours house and I noticed the same smell for the first time in 20 years. There is no judgment here I was just interested if other people have noticed this and what causes the smell? Do the homeowners get it? Could my house smell like that and I dont know? Just looking for others experiences I suppose out of curiosity

My mum was a teacher and one of her colleagues always smelled of fried food. She dried her washing on a pulley in the kitchen where she was daily grilling or frying meat and the smell lingered in her clothes.
Everything that comes out of MIL's house stinks of damp because she refuses to ventilate the place. PIL looked after our DDs an afternoon a week before they started school and they came home with their hair and clothes smelling of damp. When she visits us, if I am out when she arrives, even if it wasn't for her car randomly abandoned on the driveway, I can smell the damp on her jacket hanging on the coat stand as soon as I walk in the door. BIL was visiting her from overseas recently and just before he went home we went out for lunch. I gave his DW a goodbye hug and her beautiful long hair stank of damp.

As well as everything else that has been said; there is also rubbish to consider - if people dont clean, then they won't be cleaning their rubbish bin either and it'll stink. I know everytime I empty the bin, the recycling or the food waste, it gets washed and spritzed with antibacterial spray. Rubbish smells too.

I noticed last winter how many older people’s coats stank!!

I think people get nose blind.

I dropped my colleague home once and her house stank of grease/fat. Her husband only eats meat and it was rancid. She obviously didn’t realise because she lived in it.

It’s like when you poo, if you’re sat there long enough, you stop smelling the poo. Unless you leave and re-enter…

Cooker hood filters can get really smelly if not cleaned on a regular basis.

It smells like unwashed hair to me, I can smell it on furniture and pillows that haven’t been washed

I remember my grandads house being a bit like this as he got older. He has a deep fat fryer and ate a lot of fried food so there was always a slightly “greasy” smell in the air and there was often a stickiness/ tackiness to his kitchen cupboards. He did clean but wasn’t on his hands and knees scrubbing and would have been insulted if we tried to do it!

The smell is a combination of grease/Chip pans and damp it reminds me of the 60 s.

open windows and doors regularly and change bedding and towels once a week . Empty bins before you go to bed every night. Wash bins out at least once a week. Ensure all sinks showers an toilets are flushed regularly don’t let enter stand for too long.

Cooking, smoking, cheap candles, pets, not cleaning, no soap, windows shut

Gross!

I open windows year-round and have my back door open for at least half an hour a day even in winter because my house is old and will generate smells if left unattended. I also have a dog. But people who come round (and some are my kids who wouldn't hesitate to tell me me) say that it doesn't smell awful.

But if I've fried anything (especially fish) I am paranoid about the smell and tend to have everything open for ages after. Fortunately, with the advent of the new deep fat fryers with lids, that 'old chip' smell seems less common now.

My parents house smells like this (they are grimy haha) and I never noticed when I lived there but do now I visit. They don’t own a chip pan, but that’s the smell. Honestly? I don’t know, but knowing and growing up with them, I think it’s probably just not bothering to properly clean.

As PP’s have said too, I have pets, like to cook etc, and I’m really paranoid about smells. I clean (far more than my parents haha) and have windows open every day.

ETA: Oh and barely anything in my house isn’t wipeable, leather furniture, hard floors. My parents made me a touch obsessive because I was so nose blind when I lived there haha!

I was also thinking along the same lines, I’ve been into houses before where it smelt like old cooking oil, like a deep fat fryer that had been used and not cleaned?

It made me feel a bit rough after being in there for a while.

A house I frequent reeks of mould. It’s not the house that’s mouldy, it’s the amount of crap stuffed into corners and they’re very keen on clutter and not dusting, so if it’s damp outside, it seeps in and sits in their piles of stuff everywhere.
They have a policy of “waste not want not” so their sofa is from a dead relative, was left outside for 2 days for them to collect. In England, so it obviously rained. The lady of the house refuses to wash towels (she says they’re for drying clean stuff so they don’t need washing) so there’s an awful smell of damp everywhere.
Gross smells are just laziness and a lack of washing/cleaning as a whole.

Humans smell, food smells, bacteria smells, the mixed combination gives a certain smell.
Not rocket science.
You get use to different smells pretty quick. I always got a bit of a whiff in my parents, in the later years, it wasn’t a horrible smell? Their scent.

The only smell that I cannot tolerate is damp. It makes me ill. I have awful memories of showering in a friends house as a teenager, the shower curtains stank, they were moulded, the water splashing off them and on me. I didn’t think about it much other than the smell at the time now it gives me anxiety.

It’s the worst when the smell sticks to YOUR clothes so you have to wash everything after leaving, including raincoats which obviously shouldn’t really be washed. I think it’s caused by not ventilating the house (some people never open windows at all), not spraying enough antibacterial around and wiping messes up, frying food without windows open and leaving grease on the hob maybe. Basically being a bit slovenly and not cleaning enough.

I had a smell in my house for years that I couldn’t identify. It’s a 1930s house and I would be nose blind to it when living here but when i went on holiday and came back, I could smell it. It was a stale, funny metallic smell. We’re very clean personally and in the house. I air the house every day. Then this summer, we had all the radiators replaced as they were old and not very efficient (single panel). Anyway, coming back from holiday this time, no smell! I would never have thought they were to blame, but yes they were!

Gas cooking and radiators creates a layer of grease on the walls nearby just from the gas. Our house had that when we bought it.

It could be that in addition to food smells.

Gas cooking and radiators creates a layer of grease on the walls nearby just from the gas. Our house had that when we bought it.

It could be that in addition to food smells.

I worked in a nursing home for many years. We had to open bedroom and sitting room windows after some visitors due to the smell of deep fat fryer that lingered in the air. I don’t think people realise how that smell clings to their clothes and hair. The same with cigarette smoke 🤢

My house smells. I keep it clean but it's my elderly shih tzu. I wash his bedding weekly, clean the carpets often and he goes to the groomers regularly so his coat is short. He still stinks and likes nothing better than rubbing his eyes and rolling around all over the sofa/carpets. No matter what I do I think I'm stuck with a smelly home 😢...at least he's happy though!

My front room smells horrible despite every effort to clean, I finally realised it was the flooring, which is wood effect lino and has been down over a decade. I've mopped and bleached but it won't shift. We will be replacing it but need the room replastered first so need to put up with it a bit longer!

A few years ago my very clean kitchen developed a 'deep fat fryer' smell - I realised it was the cooker hood

Although it was regularly cleaned it had been some time since I had changed the filter - as soon as I did this, problem solved!

It’ll be a mixture of all sorts - just the ‘grease’ that comes from humans, a build up of hair, sweat and general muck getting into carpets and furniture.

Yes, I work in a supermarket and many of the gross coats, caps and hats that older people wear are noticeably grimy, smelly and unwashed.