I'm a clean guy with dirty habits.
I wait until I'm forced to wear the shirts from my high school theatre days to do laundry, and I like to let the garbage grow to a healthy height before I trim it down.
As a result, my room occasionally reeks of wet socks and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. A smell like that is just another excuse the ladies use to not stay the night.
I bought a Glade scented air freshener to ease the impact. It's the kind you plug into a wall outlet, with a tiny fan inside that blows the scent of "fresh linen" around the room.
I couldn't wait to plug it in. Just think: While my dirty undershirts fester with sweaty, Right Guard armpit cakes and the tower of greasy Five Star pizza boxes stains the rug, I'll still smell like I just climbed out of the dryer.
It's been plugged in for a month, and so far it has worked as well as dousing a rotting corpse in Febreze.
When I walk in the room, I'm hit with a tidal wave of "fresh linen" - which isn't as subtle as it sounds. That little fan, even on its lowest setting, packs a punch so powerful you'd think you've been stuffing your nose with Tide to Go instant stain removers.
Now that the scent has embedded itself in my clothes, the smell of laundry follows me around like a shadow. In fact, I smell like the kind of guy who installs a Glade scented air freshener in his room. Nothing screams "available" quite like that.
Meanwhile, the air freshener is fixing the room's stink about as well as free showers would fix homelessness. Wait ten minutes or so, and the scent melts away, clearing the path for the smell of death to creep its way northward toward the nostrils.
The room's musk has grown into a whole new beast. It dodged the gym-class shower I lobbed in its direction and mutated into an exotic crossbreed of banana peppers and chewing tobacco - two things that have never been in my room, frighteningly enough. It's doubtful the ladies will step in my room at all when they think I'm hiding a dead animal somewhere inside.
Lesson learned. Just as a spray of Axe does not replace bathing, an air freshener does not replace getting off your ass to take out the trash and do the laundry.
