DIY room atomiser

Kids are so creative, even when you would really prefer that they weren’t.

I’d been out to get a new car seat with my dad and my mum had very kindly come over to babysit.

As I walked through the door I thought the house smelt a tiny bit funky and that I best nip it in the bud by changing the bins before the smell took hold.

Having changed the bins I settled down to a game of ‘try and tickle me’ with the kids.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon I kept becoming aware of a fishy smell that kept filling the room every now and again. Well having already changed the bins, I instantly grabbed up the little one and sniffed her. Nope. Hmmm. The kids and I played ‘we’re going on a smell hunt’* to no avail.

When my husband arrived home his first comment was ‘wow the bins are kicking up, the house stinks as you walk in!’ I replied that I thought the same and had already changed the bin but the smell was still there.

After putting the kids to bed we went on another hunt trying to identify the source of the smell. Sadly, this also failed. It was a warm evening so we opened all of the windows and pulled out the big guns in a bid to eradicate the smell. Oh yes it was time for the Yankee Candle.

The mixture of fresh air and strawberry scented Yankee Candle had made the house smell more pleasant but as soon as we blew out the candle and closed the windows the bad smell was back. Slight at first, then gaining momentum as time went on.

By this point I was questioning if there was a dead animal rotting somewhere. Not as random as you might think. My cat has been known to bring in and kill ‘presents’ for us, which we have found years later in various stages of decomposition. Nice.

Resigning myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to discover the source of the smell today I went to let the cat in for the night and give him his bed time biscuits. As I bent down to sprinkle some more biscuits into his bowl I noted that his bowl was completely empty. Strange, I topped it right up to the top earlier before I went out. Then I glanced over to his water bowl. Ah, suddenly it all made sense.

The cat’s water bowl was full of his biscuits. My daughter who had recently taken a keen interest in the cat’s food had emptied all of his biscuits into his water bowl. They were floating around and were giving off the delightful fishy scent. Yes that’s right my daughter had inadvertently made a DIY room atomiser.

You go to bed. I’ll sort this out says my husband. That’s nice I think… until the next day when there is a familiar but unwanted smell in the kitchen. Which I later discovered, upon closer inspection, was the still soggy biscuits that had been rescued from the cat’s water bowl and put into the almost empty kitchen bin and then had more rubbish heaped on top of them. Helpful!

What creative gems have your children made?

*This game is based on the story ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ by Michael Rosen. This is a good game to remember to trick the kids into helping you to do many boring tasks such as: We’re going on a dirty clothes hunt, or we’re going on a missing key hunt etc.

#mummy #blogger #mummyblogger #kids #mumlife #smell #parenting #livingtheserenedream #diffuser #atomiser #kidssmells #baby #toddler