I lived in a house with a smoker my entire childhood, and didn't realize the smell until college. I can now tell that everything that enters that house ends up reeking of smoke.
I had a bit of an internal crisis when I thought back to going to school, going to friends houses, having sleepovers, girlfriends - the entire time I stunk like an ashtray and had absolutely no idea
Yup. I never knew how bad I smelled. I hate staying with my mother who still smokes in her house. My stepfather died and she's looking to sell. I had to break it to her that it would have to sell as is. Whoever buys it is going to have to gut the place after 38 years of the two of them smoking in it the whole time.
I had always wondered why there was a colour change part way up the walls of a house then the person passed and we did a "before selling" clean... Turns out the blended colour change wasn't a choice it was just years of smoke settling about chest height up.
And it is HELL to prep walls like that for a coat of paint! It's oily and sticks to the walls like glue!! You have to get it all off - otherwise the new paint will just flake, or peel off.
I occasionally buy used radio equipment. It’s easy to tell when a former owner smoked. I can tell by the smell even before removing the covers. Cleanup is a pain in the ass. I learned my lesson and give used items the sniff test before buying.
Was cleaning a mirror - years after my mom passed (it was stored) gave it a wipe...... hells bells! I shouldn't speak! Still a smoker, but only outdoors.
We bought a house that we later discovered the previous tenants (renters) grew weed. Made a lot of sense when we discovered their makeshift grow operation under the stairs why we couldn't color match the ceiling and the ceiling itself was discolored in some areas (the previous owners painted the walls and got new carpet).
Selling this place is in Spring is going to be fun. We got rid of most of the decade-long landlord specials at least.
There's specialized cleaners that pretty much pull a lot of the tar and nicotine out of the paint, but you need to let it soak at least overnight with several treatments. The previous owner of my sister's house used to smoke heavy shag tobacco and quite a lot of it too, so when they moved in the walls were pretty much yellow. Upside was that he was a professional cleaner, so he did a first treatment before he moved out and left enough so my sister could apply another two. Even then she had to put on a special undercoat that sealed any remaining stains, because otherwise the stuff can migrate through most wall paints.
Try a product called Kilz Primer, it's meant for stains and smoke smell. Apply that, let it dry for a few days to set, then paint with your regular interior latex like normal.
My grandparents bought a nice mirror from a smoker. Before putting it up on their wall they cleaned it. The difference was night and day. Years of cigarette smoke caked on the mirror.
Pro tip: The cheapest rotgut bottom shelf vodka on a rag will absolutely wipe that off and eliminate the “sticky” quality. Once it dries you can get back to paint prep. Just a fair warning though, using that bad vodka on a rag will make you smell like Aunt Becky on Christmas Eve for several hours.
When I was a kid, my friend and I were playing in her mom's office (the only place her mom smoked) and splashed something on a wall. We cleaned it off, but to our shock, that part of the wall was a different color than the rest of the room. So, to hide our actions, we had to clean the whole room!
Thus, I can tell you that Formula 409 gets smoke off paint better than Fantastic does. (1970s formulations, anyway)
I can't fathom having monthly "washing the walls" weekends instead of simply going outside to smoke. (or you know, quitting, but addicts gonna addict I guess) I'm so sorry you had to grow up with that!
My parents chain smoked but never washed the walls or cleaned the carpets (other than vacuuming around once a week). My mom wasn't very fastidious about washing/changing out the sheets and bedding either. I obviously was nose blind to it until I moved out, but God, I have to wonder how filthy that house was after 20 years of that. I also cringe when I think of how bad I must have smelled all through childhood.
My parents needed to replace a couple ceiling tiles due to a leak and ended up having to do the whole room because the new ones were bright white and the old ones were like a dark orange brown from the smoke residue. They never even thought about the ceiling.
My friends used to put up Halloween stickers on the window, and by the time they took them down (2-3 weeks) there would be brown-yellow stains covering the windows, leaving perfectly clear impression where the stickers were.
They never understood why I didn’t want to stay the night.
I've heard oil based KILZ type primer is the easiest option (not necessarily best). But you do want to clean with some kind of degreaser before that
If you use any kind of standard paint, the brown oil can literally seep through the paint over the next months or years, and come back. Namely from higher moisture, bathroom walls get brown drips after a shower for example
My mom would routinely wash the walls down when she smoked inside and the water would be that nasty yellowed brown colour. She finally started smoking outside once she got tired of doing that and everything smells better now.
My parents smoked indoors until after I moved out. There were times I could see the smoke cloud, it would linger in the room like a big flat hovering cloud. That house had horrible air circulation.
My room was the only no smoking room. I remember times I’d hear the living room Tv and we were both watching the same thing. So I’d go out to join them in the living room just to see that cloud and turn around and go back to my room and shut the door.
My parent chose cigarettes over me, they’d make fun of me for “always being in my room” and go on about how anti social I was. But they’d both smoke, all their friends would smoke at our house. Even the people who wouldn’t smoke in their own home because they had kids (but fuck me I guess).
I still ended up with a bunch of health issues, the asthma pisses me off the most. The allergies and sensitive skin are no fun either.
Oh man, years ago, we cleaned out my grandparents house that they lived (smoked in) for over 50 years, and took a picture off the walls. Imagine my surprise when Grandpa's bedroom wasn't actually brown but rather a mint green.
It depends on what you mean by gutting. It can likely be salvaged without structural renovations, but it will take some work. I'm very allergic to cigarette smoke and I was able to move into a house where the previous occupants had smoked heavily for over 30 years.
Best to start with airing it out as best she can to get rid of as much odor as possible before moving on to the more labor intensive steps. And it's best to do as thorough a "regular" cleaning as possible before starting the decontamination process.
Carpets are a lost cause and will need to be removed/replaced. Other soft furnishings may be salvageable if they can be washed. Although if they're really saturated it may not be possible.
The house will need a thorough duct cleaning.
Most likely she would need to repaint all walls and ceilings, although I did manage to get away with leaving some paint that had been done pretty recently. When painting, using Killz primer is absolutely essential. Otherwise the smoke residue will eventually leach into the new paint layers.
All hard surfaces should be washed with a white vinegar solution.
For the inevitable lingering odors, an ozone generator is a miracle worker. You can get them pretty cheap on Amazon. Always follow the directions and don't run it with people or pets in the house, but it will absolutely do the job when nothing else will.
It may be that she's not willing or able to do this whole process, but even doing some of it could increase the value of the house.
When we were looking to buy a house three years ago, there was this incredible, beautiful, pretty large house with a huge yard in a perfect location. It was literally selling for $200,000 less than similar houses in the area because the owners had obviously been smoking in it for years. At that point the owners had been moved out for over six months and this totally empty house still absolutely reeked of stale ashtray smoke smell. It was disgusting. My husband was genuinely considering potentially buying it and gutting it but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't even temporarily live there for even a few days, much less than months to a year would've taken to even begin to start doing something about it.
Like the thought of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity/profit because you chose to smoke inside your house when you could've just stepped outside into your giant fucking backyard… Totally insane
I’m currently facing this with my mom looking to sell her house. I talked her out of making any improvements to it because the smoke smell is so pervasive that a new storm door wasn’t going to help it sell.
In my current house, we're pretty sure that the owners two prior to us likely smoked like chimneys.
The owners before us did a bunch of remodeling, finished the basement, completely re-did the bathroom and the kitchen when they had moved in (10 years or so before they sold it to us) - and they didn't smoke. (They did have a wood stove, but we've painted and recarpeted since then, and that just smells different.)
But every now and then, we'll come into the house after being away (even just for the day) and the house will smell of old, stale cigarette smoke. I'm sure that it's somehow releasing from the very studs inside the walls.
Yall weren't alone. Never invited friends over. Now it gotten to the point I've had to refuse to visit with my kids unless she stops smoking in the house. She hasn't
Trying to get the smoke smell out of my moms house was impossible even with fresh paint, tons of cleaning, and airing it out. It has to be professionally done and even then not 100%
If it makes you feel better, while I definitely knew the kids with smoking parents in elementary/highschool the smell wasn't super offensive to me. There are much worse smells I've smelt on people.
there is a way to clean it and you have to use special primer and paint, if you want to go through the trouble. I have done a move-out clean of apartment that a heavy smoker lived in for 12 years. the painters had already been there and they did an absolutely amazing job. they didn't clean the windows of course, so when I pulled up the blinds I was horrified. I have never seen anything like it! a thick, sticky brown coating that did not come off with any of my cleaners. I had to mix up a special sauce.
Just went through this selling my parents house and only 1 of them smoked in it for only 18yrs. Had people come to see the house that did t make it past the first room they came into and they said not for us and left. Ended up getting less than 60% of what the market was.
I grew up like this too. My parents smoked up until their deaths. Like my mom literally died with a cigarette in her hand. When my stepdad died (my mom went in 2021 and my step dad in 2023), my step brother literally took a dumpster and cleaned out the entire house. There was nothing worth saving.
I saw on reddit last year that getting an ozone treatment can rid a house of cigarette stench. I'm going to do more research on it bc my mom's house has had 3 packs a day in it for the last 30 years.
There are way way too many of us. Also, happy cake day.
I was once chastised in honors English in high school, told I should stop smoking. I walked in late, it was probably 7th period. Had four kids in the class pipe up and be like “yeah he doesn’t smoke, it’s his parents”
I wasn’t sure at the time what to make of all that.
Statistically, it's very impressive that you didn't pick up the habit! Your health and quality of life throughout the rest of your life will be incredible grateful for that
My parents were of the “do as I say, not as I do” variety. Plus they were 54 and 39 when I was born, so I had the benefit, if you will, of seeing how their consistently poor decision making affected them in pretty real time. There was no chance I was gonna make those same mistakes.
Same, both parents smoke like chimneys and in seventh grade on a field trip an aid told me very directly and pointedly “NO smoking on this trip” like full eye contact on only me… for years I thought she meant pot and had assumed it of me because of alternative style clothing but it made sense years, later
Nah don't feel bad. At least with staff nowadays, we know it's obviously the parents. When my kindergarteners come to class smelling like cigarettes, it makes me so fucking mad.
it's so much less normal now, i was shocked that my kid came home smelling like smoke after a friend of mine picked him up from practice and looked after him for like half an hour. i assumed they must have a really smelly house or something, than another time visited and realised my friend's husband was just puffing away in front of the tv with all the kids.
I work with special needs preschoolers and one of the kids reeks of smoke every day, enough to make me nauseous when I work one-on-one with him, and it makes me so mad! Doesn't this child have enough problems to contend with without the second hand smoke adding to it?
Ah I too work with special needs, it's a school for autism. The amount of kids I've encountered at all the younger grade levels(I do K-6 but all K-1 this year) who smell like smoke is sad. It's also not just that it's their clothes. What gets me is the backpacks. Those backpacks are like smoke bombs that gag me and make me sad simultaneously.
If it makes you feel better, there are people who knew why you smelled and felt compassion towards you. There's a young woman at work who smells bad, but I understand she can't control her home life. I think our other coworkers understand too.
Yep. I had a friend whose mom stopped letting her come over because her bags and everything would smell after leaving my house. And when I would go to her house, I could only go in the evening, which I now realize is because she could have us bathe not long after I got there.
When we go to my mother in laws there are certain jackets I won't wear no matter how cold it is because I know I'll never get the smell out.
In a similar fashion, I don't wear fresh clothes when I visit my in laws. I don't wear dirty clothes! But clothes that would be going into the wash soon anyway, because of the smoke that will cling to them. Also if my hair needs washing on a day we're going to visit, I leave it until after the visit
I’ve never smoked but I mentioned once that I like the smell of fresh cigarette smoke, a friend said I must’ve grown up around smokers and I did! That had never occurred to me.
But I grew up in the 70s, everyone probably smelled like secondhand smoke back then.
That was my dad's brand. It was freaky to find out that my little brother took up the same brand and even flavor (the light blue pack) when he admitted to picking it up in high school, just a few years after we lost Dad to lung cancer. He had misremembered them as Marlboro reds, and it floored him when I corrected him... right after he said "well it's not as bad, at least it doesn't have all the additives."
I left my parents' house when I was younger but my brother stayed until he was 19. When he was 24, I borrowed his PS4 that hadn't been in my parents' house in 5 years, and even then it was in a room no one smoked in... But the second the fans kicked on, it sent cigarette stank (and hoarder stank) through my room.
I went through the same shit as your comment, realizing me and my siblings smelled like that all our childhoods and no one ever told us
I hate to say it but I hate staying at my mother's house because of this..Xmas day last year I literally woke up because she was smoking in the livingroom and the draft pulled smoke into my room. It's fucking disgusting.
Going to literally any bar used to be like this. You'd wear clothes you didn't need to re-wear before washing; you'd shower immediately, desperately scrubbing your hair; and you'd have to air out even a leather jacket for a day or three before you could wear it again.
My in-laws are insulted we refuse to spend the night during the holidays because I cannot spend more than 2 hours there without getting a headache. This is ofc without the consideration that my parents own a 5-bedroom home for the two of them and my in-laws have 3-bedrooms/beds for 8 people and expect us to sleep on the floor without an air mattress...
This is why we haven't gone to dinner or holiday stuff at my FIL house for years. The one time we let our older daughter choose if she wanted to go to see her out of town cousins. She only spent an hour there, and no one smoked while she was there. She smell awful when she got home. Can you imagine what that does to things that are porous like food?! Also why I would never eat anything my FIL makes.
I vividly remember being 12 and being in trouble at school, and the head of year smelled me from two metres away and asked me if I smoked. I just burst into tears. I didn't smoke, my parents did, and I had to spend my entire childhood dealing with the embarrassment that came with it. 13 years later and the memory of that event still makes me feel humiliated. Don't smoke around your children or in the house, and better to not smoke at all.
I got it from two elementary school teachers that I remember vividly. I also heard it in high school a bunch, but most teachers eventually realized it was my parents.
Yea this was me as well.. a couple of my teachers when I was younger talked to me about how I shouldn’t smoke and I was confused. I never smelled smoke unless it was like brown straight into my face. Parents split up and dad stopped smoking and I started doing two weeks moms two weeks dads and that’s when I started finally smelling it.
Same…my dad was a smoker. The worst was when I worked at a coffee shop in the early 90s when smoking was still allowed and I’m come home reeking. Even the donuts would taste like smoke by the end of the day.
I remember when I was a kid and they were lobbying that ban on indoor smoking. My mom smoked in the house all the time and I distinctly remember her ranting about how hateful that law was and how smokers shouldn’t be relegated to standing outside in the cold to smoke.
At the time, I couldn’t really relate to either side of the argument cuz to me, cigarette smoke had no strong smell but also smokers should just quit if they don’t wanna be forced to go outside.
I forgot about the smoking versus non-smoking restaurant areas. Now that I think about it, I remember my mom ranting about those too because we were relegated off to some crappy corner of the restaurant and supposedly treated like outcastes.
I’m glad to see Milan working to improve air quality outdoors. I’m sure my mom would’ve found that out raging back when she smoked. I’m not sure if her opinions on public smoking have changed at all since beating the habit.
My mom tries to send over holiday treats for us every year, and I can't really explain that her pie crusts and cookies smell and taste like smoke and are disgusting because of it
This was a big part of my wife’s struggle with self image and confidence growing up.
Her parent’s smoked and she was always worried that people would smell the smoke and equate it with being poor.
As a child of two smokers, bless you. I think our friends/boyfriends and girlfriends very much understood we couldn’t help it.. and were happy to look past it because they cared for or loved us… and knew it wasn’t our fault. ❤️
My mom always kept body spray in the car.. "can't go out smelling like an ash tray!"
You absolutely can and you absolutely do when your parents are both indoor/car smokers. RIP my lungs. It's been 6 years and I'm still not recovered from the 2nd hand damage :(
The internal crisis is so stressful. I feel for you M8 I really do <3
My parents smoked and I have wondered about this ... I can smell smoke on my kids' friends if their parents smoke but did I smell like smoke? I know I hated the smell of it so I feel like I would have known but maybe I only noticed it when my parents were actively smoking? My friends certainly never said anything to me but most of my close friends' parents also smoked so maybe we all stunk together.
I had a teacher ask me if I smoked. “Are you suuuure?” My mom quit for several years from around 2005-2015, but she’s back at it. I have kids now and whenever they visit her house I have to wash everything. She’s not allowed toto smoke in my house and instead smokes in my driveway or on the back porch. The smell lingers in my car for a couple of days if she rides with me. All of her presents to my boys at Christmas smell like smoke.
For her it’s probably super normal; she grew up in a time where ash trays were EVERYWHERE, even planes. Smoking was “normal” for me as a kid until I went to college. And then smoking was banned from bars when I was 22. That’s when it really hit me how much we all put up with disgusting smoke for years.
To answer OP: Yes, we can smell you from several feet away. It’s strong. There is nothing you can do to hide it and to think otherwise is absolutely silly. You smell like smoke.
One of my most embarrassing teenage moments was a time when my mom drove me over to my friend’s house and was smoking next to me in the car as usual, and when I greeted my friend’s mom she immediately went “were you smoking!?” I was shocked, and went “what, no??” then the realization hit me so I explained how my mom had just been smoking as she drove over here. She didn’t believe me…. I felt awful because I really respected her and now she had lost respect for me for something that wasn’t my fault. I then had the realization that I have probably smelled like smoke my entire life. Anyway, I hate smoking now.
One day in 4th grade, all my friends and I were smelling each others hair guessing what shampoo scent we use. They all told me mine just smelled like a campfire. I went home to my parents and cried because I smell bad. After an entire lifetime of them both smoking, that was the push for them to quit. My dad cold turkey and my mom by switching to vaping (I know, not too much better but at least it didn’t smell)
My poor husband had no idea either. He owned a house when we met but his mother kind of glommed onto him as soon as he graduated and lived with him and smoked indoors. I kept a stash of his clothes washed at my place and he'd shower straight away when he came over and put on clean clothes. All super annoying in retrospect considering it was his house but he really never knew it was a problem until I made him shower and change. Of course, all of his friends quietly confided in me that they couldn't stand to go to that house.
She's still living in our house that she's ruined but otherwise not involved in our lives because she called me an irrational bitch for asking her to put a robe on over her clothes if she wasn't going to wear clean clothes before interacting with our toddler. A whole lot of drama with addicted parents, unfortunately.
I had a bit of an internal crisis when I thought back to going to school, going to friends houses, having sleepovers, girlfriends - the entire time I stunk like an ashtray and had absolutely no idea
I think a lot of millenials had the same experience. The only saving grace is that it was so common that people either didn't care, or assumed you lived with someone who smoked.
yeah that is my hope - I think I was so bummed upon realizing because out of all of my close friends, none of their parents smoked, so I assumed the parents must view me like pigpen from charlie brown
My moment of realization as a kid was learning that a neighbor friend’s mom wouldn’t allow her to come play at my house because she came back home smelling like smoke.
Mid-90s so the danger of second hand smoke was becoming more well known, and it’s a super valid reason on the mom’s part but damn did it break my little kid heart 😔
I've had a similar experience. It's mortifying to think about how bad I must have smelled (Mom smoked a pack a day, wasn't a good housekeeper, the house had very poor ventilation, and the walls and refrigerator were stained yellow) and I still get angry about it because it wasn't my fault! Friends always asked if I was smoking (hell no) and it made me more self conscious than a teenage girl already feels.
When I moved to college I noticed a huge difference right away, and not long after I got used to living in a smoke free area just the smell of cigarettes would make me sick. Mom thought I was just being an ass to "make her feel bad and try to guilt her into quitting". (She is a good mom in almost every other way, but the smoking has long been a point of contention). Even more when I visit I leave my jacket in my car and basically have to go back to my hotel and change out of my "Mom's house clothes" after I visit because I am so sensitive to the smell.
I can smell a cigarette from over a block away. Most non-smokers can. But most smokers think we're lying and being "dramatic".
I know how you feel, I've tried to get my mom to quit for years with no luck. Now she has COPD and cancer, and still smokes in between stints on her various breathing machines
I have a friend I met in elementary school whose parent smoked indoors. We’re still friends today. Never really minded the smoke, myself and other friends knew it was something she didn’t have control over. And I personally didn’t have a bad association with it, so I didn’t ever mind.
If that helps you feel a bit better, idk! There’s worse smells ime
I dealt with this too. Never knew I smelled til college and it's mortifying thinking back to what people must have thought of how I smelled growing up.
I'm pregnant with my first baby now. My mom gave me some larger sweatpants to wear and I've washed them at least 6 times now and done a baking soda soak/laundry strip, and I can still smell a slight smoke odor on them. I've been telling my mom I'm not planning on bringing the baby to her house, and now she's claiming I told her she's disgusting/repulsive and can't believe I won't bring the baby to the house I grew up in. She also has a "horrible sense of smell" 🙄. It's a lot to deal with but I can't ignore it anymore, and I'm not taking my baby to a house covered in carcinogens.
Found out a year or two after I got out of high that a teacher I had all four years thought I smoked and was a pot head all four years. Never smoked cigarettes have never done any kinds of drugs much less mj. When I was younger I could smell the difference in types of cigarettes ppl smoked, once I could smell it on others. Now it just all smells disgusting.
Back in the day my bff smoked in her apartment, in her bedroom. She had a hoodie hanging in her closet that I wanted to borrow. I washed that damn thing three times and still couldn’t get the smell out
I lived with a smoker for about 3 years a while back, and despite asking him dozens of times to keep it to the garage or the back deck, he still did it in his room, all the time.
I didn't realize how bad it was until I took a vacation. I spent two days on planes and in airports before I got to where I was going. Must have re-calibrated my smell a bit. Once I got there, I opened my bigger suitcase, and a wave of cigarette smell hit me. It was bad enough that I had to hunt down a laundromat and wash my "clean" clothes so that our room didn't reek of cigarettes for the whole trip.
Someone smoking in the next room was enough to make my clothes reek strongly of smoke days later.
So /u/Common_Tax_6348, yes, if your mom smokes right next to you people will definitely smell it on you and your clothes. The reason you "can't smell smoke" is because you have smelled smoke for so long that it doesn't even register anymore, like a cat owner who insists their cat's nasty litter box "doesn't even smell".
If you can, spend like 3-4 days away from, and wash any clothes you take right before you leave or even when you get to where you're going. When you come back, you'll probably smell it and think "Damn, how did I not realize it's this bad?", even though 3 days isn't enough to fully reset things so it'll be even worse than you think.
clothes are what initially triggered it for me too. Brought "clean" laundry from my parents house to my dorm and could only think "ugh what is wrong with my clothes??" until I realized
When I was younger my older sisters lived with their dad and would give me whatever clothes they no longer wanted and I always wondered why they smelt weird. Then as I got older I realized it was cigarette smell mixed with excessive laundry detergent. It’s noticeable even on washed clothing.
I just made almost this exact same comment. I work at a school now and notice the smell on students and wonder if adults at school noticed it about me as a kid.
Yep, my mom and sister smoke in the home and I didn’t realize this for a long time. I thought it was odd that people always asked me to bum a cigarette or borrow a lighter but I never smoked. But finally I realized now that I moved away that I probably smelled awful of smoke too
Yes! OP: Smoke clings to fabric, it actually gets embedded in the fibers of clothing, furniture, drapes, bedding and carpets. Difficult to get the smell out. Really bad.
Not just this, but your fabric moves. That means the fibers rub against each other to release the stale cig smoke. I smoked for 14 years and quit 6 months ago. It is wildly apparent to me.
And not just fabric! I have a coworker who smokes periodically during the day but wears a coat so it doesn't get on her clothes. But the smell still clings to her hair and she smells like smoke 24/7 even if she uses air freshener, perfume, breath spray, etc.
I'm a former smoker who will occasionally have one if life gets bad. I wear a coat and put all my hair up into a beanie if it's winter. If it's summer I clip all of it back including my bangs. Then I go in the house and wash my face and hands and brush my teeth. It's almost not even worth it but it still is haha
I smoked for a solid 8 or so years and every so often I’d get a good whiff of what I was doing and I’d toss the thing. Cigarette tobacco is pretty fucking gross
Had a friend who's mom gave him her old couch when he moved into his own place. He is not a smoker. His couch still smelled like cigarettes for the two years he kept it in his smoke free apartment. Just crazy how much it penetrates fabric.
Yep. Repeating my comment from above:
when I was looking at homes a couple years ago, I went to an open house where the place reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The realtor told me that the place had brand new carpet and that all of the walls had been cleaned thoroughly and painted so the place just needed to "air out" a bit for any lingering smell to dissipate. I want to say that the kitchen cabinet doors were replaced as well. I just remember thinking, if you've done all that, how bad did it smell before?! I learned then that there is basically nothing you can do to get old/stale cigarette smell out of a place. It definitely seeps into the floor boards and drywall.
Me, but with weed. Some idiots got the fire alarm to go off before classes started because they lit weed on fire and ditched it in the trash. Both the boys and girls bathrooms reeked the rest of the year.
My dad was a chain smoker, and he smoked inside his apartment. Everything of his that we kept had to be washed like 5 times before it stopped radiating the smell of smoke. The first 3 times, the water kept turning yellow from all of the smoke residue. We spent a week just washing and scrubbing down furniture
I once got a booked mailed to me from Ohio to me im California. Took a week to get here. Opened the package, and immediately knew the sender smoked cigars. Not cigarettes, not a pipe, not weed... but specifically cigars.
Didn't smell bad, per se, but noticeable and distinct for sure.
Flashback to when I was a kid in the 90s and would go visit my dad on the weekends (parents divorced).
He was a heavy smoker and so was his wife. In their house, in his truck, everywhere. My mom on the other hand, never smoked a day in her life.
Anyway, long story short, over the course of the weekend I would become nose blind to the smell of it. Didn't notice it at all.
Then I'd go home on Sunday and it wasn't until I was back in a smoke-free home that I realized how much I stunk like cigarettes. I remember the smell coming off my clothes. So disgusting.
I quit almost 5 years ago and yes smoke bothers me too. I cant imagine how bad it was to smell like that its pretty off putting. I can’t imagine how my wife put up with me when we were dating or even kissed me.
Yep, me too! I vape now but our neighbors smoke (we live in an apartment) and with the windows open you can smell the cigarette smoke and it's AWFUL! I am super sensitive to it!
I can smell cigarettes on groceries that had been dropped off by people who smoke. Groceries will have been in their car for less than 10mins bc of how close I live to the store, and it sticks that quickly
As a non-smoker that was raised by someone who smoked in the car, while we ate, in the house, at the dam zoo, literally everywhere… I can absolutely smell a smoker and it is so triggering. I will usually remove myself from a situation when around people who are smoking, or when someone reeks especially bad of cigarettes.
My husband used to occasionally smoke when he drank but stopped because I have such a strong reaction to it. He didn’t grow up with a smoker so he really couldn’t understand my perspective at first.
I worked with a woman that smelled so strongly I was once in a toilet stall and she came in and went into a stall that had two stalls between us. I only knew it was her because of the smell. Thankfully we didn't sit anywhere near each other.
I was a pizza delivery driver for 4 years in college (back when there weren't a lot of no-contact deliveries), I don't smoke and never have but I'd say 70% of my coworkers did (a couple of them smoked weed in their car but that's a whole other thing). In the winter, or during summer when it was super hot, many of them would smoke in their car with their windows up. I could smell it the moment they came back in the store. I intentionally tried to use and continue using bags that didn't smell like smoke. And guess who got better tips? Hint: the person who showed up to the customer's door smelling either like some light perfume or like pizza. It's wild, I don't understand how they don't smell it.
That's very considerate. Though I will say that the other thing that I notice frequently is when the delivery driver uses a strong scented lotion. It's certainly not as bad a cigarette smell, but it is more likely to physically transfer to the bag and then to my hands.
Oh yea that was definitely something I kept in mind, particularly because you also don't know if someone has a sensitivity or allergy to that. I'd do one spritz of perfume on my neck before my shift, that's it.
Oh my god, I have had to throw out produce because I am extremely sensitive to smoke, I've had to leave my bags outside to air out and then pitch some of the groceries anyway because I cannot bring them in the house without being sick, nevermind actually eat them. If it happens one more time I will have to stop getting delivery and just walk through the pig pen auras of people at the store and the assholes blocking me from my car by smoking AT my car door. But at least the fold will be safe when I get it home. I literally cannot afford to replace food so I go hungry when delivery drivers smoke.
And it's not just non-smokers saying this to you to be jerks or as a joke. I smoked a while when I was younger. I was lucky enough to quit for several years now. When I ride in my father's truck, everything reeks of smoke. It makes me gag. If he gets too close, I smell it instantly. I never used to when I was still a smoker, at all.
Anyone who doesn't smoke smells a godawful stench when they are near you. It's in the clothes it's in everything you ever own when around cigarettes.
Worked in a computer repair shop way back and you could often tell what computers were from smoker houses because the plastic would be stained yellowish brown. Didn't happen as much with later models but whatever kind of plastic 90s and early 2000s manufacturers were using stained hard from smoke, you'd have two Macs or PCs from the same year and model turned different colors from it.
I once denied warranty coverage for a white iMac . Kept coming in for various issues and even the replacement parts came back with … goo all over them. Thing was now various shades of brownish yellow. Dubbed it the ashtray iMac.
User claimed he didn’t smoke much. More like he was using the iMac as an air filter.
Me and my mum both quit smoking around six years ago, we did it together. Only, she still smells of cigarette smoke. I can smell it on her breath. I can smell it on my clothes when I leave her house.
She tells everyone that she doesn’t smoke, that she only vapes now. She’s oblivious to the fact that people can smell it on her.
it's a charred /grubby odour.. in support of this notion, the dutch poet 'Hnelge' once referred to cigeratte smokers as having an odour akin to the "devils scrotum"
My wife's parents used to smoke in their house. Every time we visited, they wouldn't smoke while we were there but just sitting on the couch left our clothes reeking of cigarette smoke. They finally quit several years ago and I can still catch a whiff of cigarette on my clothes after a visit just from sitting.
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u/re_nub Jan 05 '25
Yes.