Curry smells how to get rid of or prevent

Introduction
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Has anyone had back to back bookings and found the property smelt of curry. what to do.

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I had 5 week guests who left the place smelling like a restaurant - had to wash all the kitchen walls and ceiling and wash all fabrics in the 3 br house…and apologise to incoming guests

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I’ve seen lots of people mention an ozone machine.

Wash everything in vinegar and leave windows and doors open. Get lots of febreze.

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House Rule #217: No cooking of curries or other strongly flavored foods!

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Thanks I have read about ozone and vinegar also boiling vinegar water and cinnamon sticks. I wish I had the guts to say no Curry’s please but they are an Indian family stay over Christmas and that’s there thing!!

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Christmas in September :smile: ?

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Put fans in the windows and run them all day. Place opened canisters of coffee grounds around the house.

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I just had the most awful guests who even after I was kind enough to allow them a 2 hour extended check-out time they STILL wouldn’t leave until I threatened to call the police. That aside…They left the kitchen a disgusting mess, but worst of all but the smell of CURRY! This rental home of ours is located in an area that 1) doesn’t have a lot of people who use curry, 2) Does have legalization of weed.
The curry issue was a problem because EVERYONE who walked in the door said “What is that disgusting smell?” … For weeks this went on. We even had to give out “rebates” for the smell. When I complained to Airbnb, the guest who left the curry smell tried to play the race card… until I sent them a picture of me… that stopped the race baiting real quick. Sadly, I live in a liberal state, so anyone darker than snow will try and play the race card
2) As for the weed smell. We put up signs and it’s all over our listing. But even when you find the evidence guests leave behind, Airbnb won’t allow us to charge for “smells” when we have to get all the curtains and comforters, etc. cleaned after guests have smoked pot.
This is one of the main reasons we are starting to shift our listings to other sites, so we have control over the security deposit, not some random kid at Airbnb.
It’s slowly working and next year we hope to be able to remove “Airbnb” from our advertising.

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My insurer will not allow use of the stove top. Bullet dodged!

Part of the issue is the clean up. I use strong flavours regularly in cooking but it doesn’t linger.

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Welcome to cook it in my kitchen if you are staying in the bedroom at my farm…as long as you share it with me. I love curry but I don’t cook…

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We don’t allow kitchen use, so we haven’t dealt with curry.

We have, however, had a guest who wore such strong perfume/cologne that it permeated the room and bath and gave me a blazing headache. And we had a back-to-back booking on the day that guest left.

Here’s what we did:

  1. We turned off the heat/AC (whatever was on). Important not to get any more of the smell into the house system! We opened all windows. We put fans in the windows, pointed outward so they pulled air out of the room. We turned on the two exhaust fans in the bathroom.
  2. We washed everything twice that could be washed—shower curtain, towels, bath rug, coverlets, blankets, sheets, and even the mattress cover and the pillow protectors.
  3. Since the guest had the closet doors open, we also washed the extra linens that were stored on the “do not use” side of the closet.
  4. We took out the room’s rug, used rug deodorizer on it, vacuumed it, and aired it outdoors on our patio.
  5. Although we don’t usually use dryer sheets, I rubbed all soft surfaces in the room with a dryer sheet (upholstered chair and mattress, as I recall). If I’d had my favorite brand of odor eliminator spray on hand, I’d have used that.
  6. Wiped off all hard surfaces with an all-purpose cleaner.
  7. I burned two apple-scented candles in the room—we don’t usually use anything scented.
  8. Probably the most important step: I wrote a rule to prohibit the use of any strongly scented products—perfumes, colognes, soaps, etc.

Whether people read the rules or not, this hasn’t been a problem since.

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No @KKC, I’ve never heard of “Houfy”. How is it different than Airbnb, VRBO, etc.?
Thank you.

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I am pre planning. I know they are a family from India and I wish I hadn’t accepted the 7 day booking! over Christmas but I have, and now I am looking to mitigate the problem especially as we have back to back booking with a 5 hr turn around

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Don’t you find that your rental needs airing after every guest? I do. Curry is by no means the worst - I think the most horrible one is the pong left by people who have been frying their pre check out breakfast. That’s awful.

Even when guests don’t cook, there’s often overpowering perfume, body spray, deodorant or whatever. And in some cases even, smelly feet or pongy body smell.

But I’ve never had a smell that hasn’t gone by the end of the turnover window (I have five hours). I open the windows when I first go into the apartment and the through breeze is enough without having to resort to any particular substances.

It’s your place so you can have whatever rules you want. If you want no smells then just say so in your rules; it doesn’t take guts. If it’s cooking smells that bother you then say that you allow ‘light cooking’ only. Or if it’s a shared house, remove kitchen access. Just bear in mind that when people book a place with a kitchen, it’s often because they want to cook.

It’s a lot easier than saying ‘no sweaty feet please’. :wink:

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It helps if you can remove any extraneous soft/fabric items, since they retain odors, as does unfinished wood. You’ll need to plan to wipe down surfaces. When I was in hospitality management, our parent company had us take harder to launder things like curtains and and bedspreads, and put them (dry) into the dryer with a wrung-out towel that had been soaked in diluted vinegar. It did a great job eliminating odors.

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Where is the smell coming from? You haven’t mentioned if this is a whole house listing or room rental. Are they cooking curry or if they’re just bringing in takeout? Its going to make a big difference in how I suggest to deal with it.

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What is “pong” or “pongy”?

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Ah. English, sorry. Smell, stink. Smelly, stinky :slight_smile:

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Hi fellow hosts,

I’ve been lurking on the forum for quite a while and found it very useful.

Once I had an Asian couple staying for half a year in my flat, and they loved cooking. After they left the smell was pretty terrible which caused complaints during the next two three weeks.

I washed absolutely everything in the flat twice including walls and ceilings, no effect. Here in north you can’t leave windows open for a long time in winter time, but I did that and nearly froze the flat. No effect.

Then I tried vinegar. I had several plates of it all over the flat overnight and the smell was magically gone next morning. Of course, the smell of vinegar was horrible but it disappears in few hours.

Nowadays if I smell anything after guests I do the vinegar treatment even if I have only a few hours time before next guests arrive. But there is more, I also use Lampe Berger which is very efficient as it takes only twenty mins to get rid of smells. The fuel of the lamp is isopropanol which is cheap and have no scent. Sometimes I might use a tiny drop of scented fuel too. Basically, all the fuels that are sold as neutral do have a scent, so I never use them as such. I get my isopropanol elsewhere at a very cheap price compared to the prices in shops that sell Lampe Bergers.

We’ve got a Lampe Berger at home too and we use it especially when cooking fish.
And by the way, Lampe Berger is nothing new. It was invented more than 100 years ago :slight_smile:

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Febreze gives me a migraine… :frowning:

I have had guests who

  • brought their stinky bag of weed into the bedroom
  • stored their SMELLY food in the bedroom (I supply a dedicated guest cupboard and fridge space!)
  • worn and sprayed strong perfumes, resulting in a week-long migraine for me

@RebeccaF - that’s what I had to do!!

Turn OFF your AC/HVAC!!! Then change the filters once you’ve finished the cleaning.

I had to wash all the furniture down with Murphy’s Oil Soap, put baking soda with crushed dryer lavender seeds on the rug - twice - and vacuum, wash down the walls and fabric items, and left bowls of vinegar and water solutions with drops of lemon essential oils in the room. It was so bad, I had to block off my calendar for two weeks.

#8 was the most important. New rule!

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