I should have known when I walked into the home and it smelled of stale smoke. I should have guessed that the rug I was buying from a Kijiji ad would smell that way too. But I had no idea that it would become the thing that stunk up the joint, and waste fifty perfectly good dollars.Â
I don’t troll Kijiji looking for crap. I thought – hey – I need a new rug for the guest bedroom. Wonder if there’s anything good listed? Sometimes there is. Sometimes people post perfectly good items they no longer need, for a reasonable price. I’ve sold lamps and all sorts of things. It wasn’t the rug of my dreams but it was the right size and general colour, and the price was certainly reasonable.
Once I got it in my car, I realized the full extent of my error. It smelled like a stale cigarette butt masked with some sort of perfume – Febreze? – and there was no way it was going into our home like that.
I consulted Google, Twitter and Facebook friends for ideas and there were lots. I scrubbed the whole thing with a sponge mop and dish soap, and sprayed it repeatedly with fabric softener. I must have unearthed whatever horrible thing happened to it in the past because once it dried it smelled worse. MUCH worse. After handling it, the smell was attached to my face! It must have been something that came from an animal. Perhaps a pet used it as a urinal. Maybe this is karma getting me back. I found it impossibly funny when my brother-in-law’s cat immediately started to pee on his new, shag rug. Maybe this is life showing me how unfunny that was!
Smokers don’t like to think that they have a smell, but they do. I now know that I emitted an odour when I was a smoker; I was simply unaware. And in hindsight I realize I put too much emphasis on creating a good Kijiji experience for the lister, than I did on the thing that I was purchasing, or I would have simply said – sorry, I should have asked if you smoked.
Derek and I talked about dumping the rug on the original owner’s lawn with a note. I considered cutting it into strips and putting it out for the trash. Instead, he rolled it up and put it at the curb. It was gone in less than an hour, presumably to someone without a sense of smell. Then I went retail shopping for a rug, a little poorer, but a lot wiser for the experience.