DS's friends say our house smells

[fruitstick]

I know it does but I'm mortified. DS's friends are also quite a bit wealthier than us with bigger houses etc but I don't want DS to feel he can't bring people round.

We keep the house clean but have a dog and two cats. The cats have litter trays upstairs which don't help.

I blame our hallway as no fucker puts their shoes away (DS & DH) and there are loads of coats (mainly DH's).

I have the next week off work so was planning on a big clean up anyway.

What do I need to be doing.

I know the dog on the sofa means we need to wash the cushions more regularly than we do. I'm not as religious about cleaning as I could be.

But tell me what I need to be doing.

This puts me off getting animals 🫣

No delusion, it doesn't smell. Unless he's used his tray the yes it smells for the few mins it takes me to clean it because he doesn't cover it up
But I scoop the tray immediately so there's nothing lingering and it goes in the outside bin
Blankets are regularly washed and cat brushed weekly and dried if he gets wet
The windows are open all day long so I get a breeze through and because I have to dry washing inside

I'm not nose blind because you can smell your home when you come back from being out and mostly it smells of persil at the minute as I spilt some! The only comments I've ever had are how nice my house smells even the police commented

I've been in houses that smell many times and it's usually greasy food smell or litter trays that aren't cleaned or wet dog

I have to have cat litter trays in the house, my elderly cat has kidney disease and doesn't go out as much as she'd like and her condition is made worse if she's stressing over somewhere to wee. I do clean it out lots as she is fussy.
The smelly one really is our house bunny.She has her own area in the lounge. We took her in when her previous owner ( my daughters ex fiance) died tragically young and suddenly.
I wouldn't have chosen to have a bunny but she's a darling. She has her own little toilet area but it's difficult to keep fresh smelling.
When my son was little he didn't like going to a friends house because of the smell which was mainly from smoking and general unwashed-ness.

You have to REALLY keep on top of the litter trays. We use good quality litter and scoop any poo out straight away, and do a full clean very regularly as well. We have a spare set of trays so one set can be properly scrubbed and they still have the other ones to use. We also use a deodoriser in the trays. We can smell when one of them has pooped if we’re in the house or if we come in from being out, but if nobody has, our house smells lovely when we come in so I’m sure we are not immune to the smell!

A house smelling if animals isn't a bad thing. For those of us who choose to have pets, it's part of the package. Keep their environments clean but don't worry about trying to eliminate evidence of their existence.

I'm sure most pet people prefer the smell of their companions than the company of those who complain about them!

Did they say what the house smells of?

Re cats- if they are male cats they are likely to wee on the inside walls of the litter tray. It needs to be regularly cleaned otherwise it does smell.

I would suggest opening windows every day, even in winter.
Try to mop all the floors using zoflora or similar, wipe skirting boards. Wash all the coats that are in the hallway.
You should be fine.

If you have pets you have to keep everything scrupulously clean, i.e. floors, sofas, etc. Floors mopped with disinfectant, carpets and rugs vacuumed frequently and shampooed regularly. You can use carpet deodoriser too. A steam cleaner will also make a difference and these can be used on sofas and curtains too.

Is there really no other place to keep the cat litter?

Ensure you wash the dog regularly and as frequently as possible/practical. Dog smell in a house can be revolting.

Air deodorisers, especially the plug-in ones, help.

You can't help that your husband is a hoarder but can you actually get rid of the stuff that you know isn't worth keeping, or perhaps store it in the loft/shed? You can use those vacuum bags with a hairdryer to store items safely.

What about a shoe cupboard in the hallway, like the one attached from IKEA? You can put a deodoriser in it to help. Wash washable shoes like plimsolls and trainers regularly. Same with school bags.

Air all rooms as much as possible. Air and wash cushion covers.

Buy covers for the couch that you can wash every week.

Don't let coats, etc. pile up on top of one another for long and air and where possible wash them regularly.

I’ve not read through all the responses so not sure of everything suggested but having read all your posts, I can see you’re debating rehoming the cats. If you choose not to, I saw you mentioned cheaper litter to change it more often. Please don’t do that. I line my litter tray with newspaper rather than a plastic liner as it’s absorbent. I’ve switched from the cheap litter to catsan so now I change it less frequently but remove waste regularly. If your cats have been indoor for 10 years I wouldn’t bother going to the expense of a cat flap now. Keeping on top of soft furnishings as suggested is the best way. And well done on the entrance mat. Sounds like you’ve made a fantastic start.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, you’ve been through a lot. Tell your DS that if he doesn’t want to feel embarrassed then he needs to start helping in the house.

I think we’ve all been tackling this question the wrong way round. It’s your home and ,presumably no-one else has remarked on the smell. Your DS’s friend’s parents are the ones at fault. They haven’t taught their child good manners and kindness.
Are you really going to invest any more time and energy on a huge undertaking such as many on here are suggesting (and btw why is that your job and not DH’s?)?You sound like a good parent and a caring pet-‘owner’. What’s the context of the remark, anyway? Maybe the 2 boys were just having an average ‘my (whatever) is better than your (whatever)’ moment which will be forgotten next week. If it was more than this, your DS deserves better friends!
I missed the bit where you said you considered re-homing the cats. I couldn’t dream of re-homing my babies full-stop, but certainly not because a rude child make an unkind comment about my house.

Smile and carry on. You’re doing great!

It is if it’s cat piss. You can love cats and hate the smell of cat pee.

I don't have a cat at present, but I always used a wood-based pellet litter. It absorbed wee, and had a faint "piney" scent. I had to keep the tray on the landing, as one of my dogs thought it was an all-you-can-eat buffet; so I also had a stairgate to keep him downstairs.

Use half woodchip litter and half absorbent rocky stuff. Scoop any poop out as soon as you see it and change out the full lot every three days max. Try to buy some new covered boxes if yours are open topped.

My house is clean but I love the smell of wax melts or clean washing so I'm probably a bit OTT with clean scents. One hack I absolutely love (although you'd need to keep it out of the pets reach) is having little organza bags filled with unstoppables in key areas. They can be a bit overpowering if placed in every room but they do work.

Another scent booster is the coronado cherry car scents air freshener (you can get this on Amazon)

This is obsessive, and the cleaning chemicals you're using are toxic. Bleaching and fabreze etc are nasty, I hate to tell you this Sadly, but to a lot of people your house probably stinks overpoweringly of perfumed cleaning stuff. Please take a breath and relax that schedule, your lungs etc will thank you for it.

This too!

Ironically.

You can't win if you have pets. They smell. Obsessively cleaning to try and disguise this is also unhelpful and ultimately unhealthy.

I second CatsnCoffee's point to a degree, that you shouldn't be tearing yourself apart over it. Make sure the house is clean yes, but accept that your house will have cat/dog smell to some degree.

It never fails to amaze me how many owners say 'my house doesn't smell' but I can smell the second I walk in the door. My mum is very allergic to cats and doors so I was always super aware of it.

But ultimately I have to suck it up (and not be rude about it) or make excuses and leave.

But yeah too many chemicals bad for you and pets stink and these are life truths that can not be avoided.

Wash the coats, crate up the shoes, get rid of the litter trays, wash sofa covers and stop dog going on the sofa or use a dog throw. Bicarb the carpet, open the windows to create a through draught, wash curtains and any other fabrics if you can.
Try and keep your animals outside or at least contained to one room.

The only things that are excessive in that list are the weekly washing of the sofa and febreezing the curtains. The rest sounds perfectly normal.

This is a deranged level of cleaning. Anyone cleaning their house that much needs to stop and get help. Plus, god knows what the environmental footprint of that much product is doing!

This. And all that use of artificial sprays and febreze make a house smell the reverse of fresh.

I'm struggling to work out what they mean by "usual cleaning" on top of all that lot.

So sorry to hear that.
Ignore them. Smell doesn’t = dirty. Enjoy life with your DS and animal members of your family. Some people on here put cleaning before everything else.
It’s 1 rude comment!

Totally agree with this.
Horrible, rude, ill mannered, child! He must be a real joy to be around.

It's not the cats that smell, it's the litter trays.
But I do agree that if you have cats, they use litter trays, aren't cleaned out promptly and you rarely open the windows - yes, a house will smell.

if you break that down as that person did, where is the deranged level of cleaning? Not everyone’s house is the same, we have four boys a dog and two cats and a fairly similar level of cleaning!

Thank you everyone. The house feels much better and I feel much better about the whole thing.

They were actually girls. One, whose I've never met before, said it smelt of wet dog as she came in.

The other girl, who I've known since she was a baby, I think is going through a 'aren't I clever' phase. So we were all having dinner and she was saying to another friend 'how come your house smells so clean, even though you've got a dog. Your house is so nice'. I think she thought she was being super subtle but she wasn't.

The other friend then said that his Mum spent all her spare time cleaning.

Our house is full of books and records and cleaning has never been my strong point.

So yes, I need to be more vigilant about the cat litter.

We do have those show cupboards but no fucker ever uses them. DH has admitted that our hallway is much nicer now and he is a bit ashamed of how it was before so will make more of an effort to keep it tidy. He's cleared out half of his (newly washed) coats.

And I've bought some extra throws for the sofa and currently trying to train dog to only sit on those.

But apart from that, I think I'm going to rely on my sparkling conversation being my major selling point.

But thank you for working through it with me.

Take a photo of your house for reference to show to other family members when it starts to get out of control

For them to arrange their stuff