the secret smell
So a couple of days ago I noticed an odd odor in my apartment. Nothing super strong, but something odd and noticeable. I doubled down, and decided that a deep clean was necessary. I bleached all the surfaces in the bathroom, hard surfaces in the kitchen, I cleaned the inside of some cabinets to be safe. Vacuumed every where took care of all pieces of dirty laundry. My apartment looked lovely. It didn't smell lovely. What was more puzzling was that it seemed to be concentrated in the living room, and so I thought that the rats must be the culprit. Cages cleaned earlier then normal, but what the heck, and I cleaned the carpet around their cages. Guess what. My apartment still smelled funny. Getting frustrated I sat down to try to figure out what had changed in the past few days. I finally realized that my girl friend who can't stand temperature variance beyond three degrees turned on the ac. I pulled the front cover off to reveal a furry mildew night mare. I've pulled all the detachable pieces off the front and soaked them with some bathroom cleaner, and scrubbed them down. I wiped down all the surfaces available to me on the front of the ac unit. Oh was I right about that smell. Cleaning the filter especially take that mild wreak and multiply by 50. So now it's all drying. If I snap it all back together and still no luck I'm calling maintenance. Because if it gives my apartment a funny smell I consider it unusable.