That Clean House Smell

One of the bad results of my recent flu was that the house began to stink.  At one early point when I was sick I discovered that the garbage hadn't been thrown out.  I couldn't smell anything at the time, but I knew it was bad news.

A few years ago when I picked up a new pail to be used as a garbage can, לא חשוב מי lo chashuv mi not important who said that I should have gotten something larger.  I insisted that on most days even smaller would be larger than we need, because I have no intention of keeping garbage in the house more than a day.  I 100% disagree with the idea that you have to fill the garbage as a prerequisite for emptying it.

Our nest has been empty for years, and besides when cooking/cleaning for Shabbat, the bag is pretty empty each morning (on a good week) when my husband throws it out.  I go for daily routine.  That way it gets done.  Let the garbage fester in those giant "green frogs" outside, not in my house!

Another secondary, or tertiary, side effect of my flu was that my food burned, since I couldn't smell it cook.  I cook by smell, not by timer.  And because I had still been very weak on Friday, I didn't wash the floors.

My senses of smell and taste have been returning very slowly.  Actually, I hadn't noticed the return of my sense of smell until I walked back in the door yesterday after seeing the grandkids:

"This house stinks!  I have to air it out, even if it's freezing!"

It really did smell awful, like burnt over-cooked food with too many spices.  A few minutes ago, I took a short break from the computer, yes at 5am, to pour some concentrated combo of bleach, flour cleaner and water on the floor and swish it around.  Unfortunately, ok, rather stupidly (chalk it up to post-flu delirium-irrationality) I did it wearing a very expensive woolen bathrobe a few inches too long which mopped some of the liquid up.

G-d willing that cleaning effort will improve matters in the war against the stink.