I Hate the Smell of Mouldy Cat Litter in the Morning!

The hallway outside my apartment smelled vile this morning. It was the sort of smell that makes you want to see if something died in a corner or if something's quietly mouldering away unnoticed until now. I know it wasn't coming from my apartment because currently, my apartment is scented in three layers; there's the remnants of the roasted chicken I made last night, a cumin-like burned scent and then the sent of my Glade Essential Oil Dewberry Candle that I lit to mask the other two smells.

The cumin-like scent isn't a good one. I took a shower last night while my chicken was roasting in the oven and came out to smell this strange, spicy, slightly burned smell. Naturally, i thought it was the chicken but since I had rubbed it with olive oil and rosemary before roasting it, I wasn't sure where the cumin came in.

(In case you're unaware of how cumin smells....it smells a bit like sweaty feet, like curry that needs to take a shower. Not a good smell but it tastes good in food...seriously!).

So that's when I lit the Dewberry candle thinking it might mask the odd smell. Only an hour later when I was on the phone with my mother did I realize where the scent was coming from. My lamp cover on my floor lamp had slid down and the lightbulb had been so hot, it was melting the plastic.

Yes, it took me an hour to discover that. How was I supposed to know melted plastic would smell like cumin? Well, I remedied that issue immediately and the smell started to drift away though a slight imprint of it remains. I'll try to chase that away with my Yankee Tart Burner thingy. That usually covers up a lot of scents with it's lovely wafting fragrances.

So, anyway, back to the scent in the hall. It smelled like neither roast chicken or Dewberry and there was definitely no cumin. It was rotting...something.

When I left my apartment and walked down the hall, I realized that some really inconsiderate person had left their trash in the hallway. Obviously, it smelled so bad that they couldn't keep it inside so they were kind enough to share it with the rest of the building.

Now, I get that there are some days when it seems like a lot of effort to walk to the dumpster. However, compared to some of the buildings in my apartment community, our building is one of the closest and it takes about three minutes to walk there, less than a minute to drive. Usually, I'll either walk it there or I'll throw it in the boot of my car as I'm headed out and then stop, dump my rubbish and continue on my merry way.

So, what I'm trying to say is that taking the rubbish out is not terribly hard. Ok, so maybe the person inside the apartment is sick or disabled or too exhausted to take it out. I get that. However, we all have balcony/decks in our building with these handy-dandy sliding doors that open to the outside. Perhaps the nasty bag of trash could have been placed there temporarily instead thus wafting the vile stink out into the open rather than into our living spaces.

Fortunately, I don't live in the hallway. I only had to endure the stink for the two minutes it takes me to lock up and leave the building. It doesn't mean I'm ok with it though. Especially since I know the owner of the trash has cats, cats have litter and there was a suspicious undertone to that smell.

Ah well, I suppose I could have taken it out for them but I wasn't sure if they wanted to keep it close. Also, I was carrying a heaped laundry basket full of clothes which I shall take to my parents this weekend. It's nice not to have to put quarters in a washer and dryer to get clean clothes.

Also, their house smells better than mine at the moment.

Happy Friday.