Korean Job Discussion Forums

[CtotheB]

One question I've always wondered about in regards to people with studio/single apartments.

I remember when I had a studio place, any time I cooked it ended up smelling like meat or garlic for the rest of the day. Combine that with the fact that you sleep and live in the same room as the kitchen generally meant that I'd have to warn to girls who came over that my apartment would smell like a baked potato as soon as you opened the door. Of course, you get used to it when you live there, but I know that my apartment smelled like food, plain and simple. This was bad because in general I don't like to use a lot of foofy air sprays, laundry detergents or Febreeze-type stuff. I even use unscented dryer sheets. Basically, the kitchen smell has always dominated any areas of my housing that have been open to it.

So my question is this: Does your place smell like food 24/7? How do you combat it? And what are some good idea to keep your place from smelling like the back of a restaurant all the time?

[Sticks]

I guess you could try cooking with some fragrant/pleasant smelling spices? Cinnamon, lavender?, lol

[Hokie21]

Easy. Dine out.


But from a website:

"We're not huge fans of air fresheners since we don't really want to just add another smell, we want to eliminate the first one. So what we normally do (after definitely taking out all remnants of the meal so it isn't the trash stinking up the place) is boil a couple of sliced up lemons on the stove. This will generally do the trick without adding another scent to the air. If it's a really strong smell (like when we made donuts at home and realized that deep frying anything seems to smell like fried fish) we put out cups of white vinegar overnight and it absorbed the smell by morning. The scent of the vinegar only hangs around for a couple of minutes and then it goes to work neutralizing the offending odor. "

[Lazio]

- use an air purifier with active carbon/charcoal filter. They are great for this kind of problem.
- open the window

[Underwaterbob]

Back in Canada, I lived above an Indian restaurant for a year. I sometimes miss the smell of curry. Good curry.

[red_devil]

Febreeze or other odor sprays work. Open all windows to ventilate.

[yeti08]

Try cracking your door with your windows open. Air flow with just 1 window isn't enough.

[kenglish]

just get an air purifier with activated carbon or decorate the place with lumps of coal that are actually used as decoration pieces in restaurants for your required purpose.

[littlelisa]

Cook good food! Problem solved. I have no problem with an apartment that smells of caramelized onions.

[whitestboyalive]

I am lucky enough to have a sliding door that seals the kitchen from the main room, event though the place is considered a one-room. I open the door to the bathroom, throw on that fan, open the bathroom window, remove the towel in the bathroom (don't want it smelling), and turn on the fan above the burner.

Whenever I'm making a stir-fry, or cooking up ingredients for a burrito, that onion smell is ... well... smelly! So I gotta keep it sealed off in that room. Before I learned to do this, a few times in the morning, after putting on nice new DRY-CLEANED clothes, I noticed they smell like onions.

Yeah, onion-smelling clothes are a huge turn-off to everyone around you... as they all think you have BO... but it's actually the onions from last night's cooking.

[Daniel_D]

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

[pkang0202]

The exhaust vent on the overhead exhaust fan is connected to my neighbor's. IF the backdraft damper is not closed (it often gets stuck open from years of grease and smoke that has accumulated in the exhaust vent) then the neighbor's exhaust is vented into my room.

One time they were sauting onions and I could l see the smoke/steam coming in.

[Caffeinated]