Before I begin, let the record reflect that I am very sensitive to smells.
We moved out of our house this past Sunday. We were well prepared, hired movers because we’re adults, and everything went smoothly. After bringing everything to our storage unit we went back to the house to do a once over cleaning since the cleaners had come the Wednesday prior, again because we’re adults.
After a very long and productive day we moved into our first Air BnB, still in Saint Paul just across the highway from our neighborhood. A little back story, our renters are moving from FL and wanted to get out before hurricane season, so we moved out a couple weeks earlier than we had planned to accommodate. We were excited to be tourists in our own city before we hit the road on the 26th.
So, Sunday night we arrived at our very inexpensive Air BnB, $450 for 5 nights, and I could smell something funky before we even got inside the house. Upon entry the funk intensified and was joined by an excessive dankness. I’m talking about the kind of dank we could feel on our skin and even the sheets and carpet felt damp. 🤢
We had no choice but to stay there that night because we had already hauled in and up two Honda Civic loads of crap into the place. I stand corrected, two Civic loads of things that we thought would fit in the Civic for the next 9 months of our adventure, and it was 9 o’clock at night after an already long day.
At 230am I couldn’t take it anymore. I messaged the manager and asked if he could bring us a dehumidifier in the morning. One positive about the place is that the manager was very responsive. I put that to the test earlier when I promptly locked us out after delivering our first load, but that’s a different story. 😂
He brought one over at 8am, along with some scented oil things to help with the smell. When we plugged in the dehumidifier it said 80% humidity! We proceeded to run it all day Monday along with 4 scented items and nothing helped. For those of you who are unfamiliar with dehumidifiers, if it says 80% humidity the bucket should fill with water in less than 6 hours and after 12 it hadn’t collected a single drop!
Side note; Dave made a very good point that we’ll be staying in many Air BnBs during our travels, and this is surely not to be the last one that has a funk, so we toughed it out for two more nights. It was a little better once the rain stopped and we were able to open the windows but not much.
Finally, by the third morning of waking up with congestion and a sore throat from what was obviously growing somewhere in our space I couldn’t take it anymore. Our amazing neighbors, who had just left for three weeks in Europe, graciously invited us to crash at their house and it was time to GTFO! The manager understood and even reimbursed us for one of the nights.
I am grateful to the universe for continuing to show us that everything will work out and we will be taken care of. I’m just hoping that this was the one off and not foreshadowing of what’s to come. And, I’m choosing to manifest positivity because that is what we’ve been shown since we decided to take this leap back in March of 2022.