It Makes Scents

What is the worst smelling thing in your house? If you answered the cat’s litter box you’re probably wrong. And if you went there in the first place you should probably be changing the litter more often. I’ll give you a hint, it’s in your kitchen. (Please tell me your cat’s litter box is not in your kitchen.)

One thing about cleaning the kitchen has always mystified me.  What causes that unique smell that the dish cloth gets when its been used for too long? It doesn’t match any of the food smells in the kitchen. It doesn’t come close to garlic, or soap, or sewer, or musty basement, or the dreaded cat box. Even though it goes away and hides a bit while the dish cloth is dry it seems like its even worse once you wet the cloth down again in trying to rinse it. It seems like while it was drying, it was building an armory of little smell bundles waiting to explode in water at a later time.

And everything it touches gets the same smell. My hands pick up this smell by just touching the cloth. Then it take a bunch of times of washing my hands to get rid of the smell. I practically have to use an entire bottle of hand soap the smells like the aftermath of Gallagher’s Sledge-O-Matic just to cover the smell on my hands.

When I first notice the smell I start to wonder how long its been there and what kind of bacteria have I been wiping on to the dishes. How often do I need to pre-emptively change the dish cloth to make sure this doesn’t happen? Is there any way to know without knowing what is causing this smell? I suppose I should just change the cloth every time you cook anything with garlic, or onion, or whatever seems to be causing this.

I’m one of those husbands who usually gets the job of cleaning the kitchen if I want to eat. But unfortunately I wasn’t born with the god-given cleaning instincts of most women. So to avoid starvation I really could use some help on this. Has anyone out there ever noticed the smell I’m talking about? How often should I change the dish cloth and towels in the kitchen? And what can I use to get this smell off my hands?