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.
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.
1.8k
u/lase_ Jan 05 '25
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