The beast that attacked my forks

On Monday we returned from a trip and the cleaning lady had been here. I already love coming home to a clean house but coming home to a clean house after traveling is awesome! She did a wonderful job and of course I love those shapes she makes out of the toilet paper.

I also noticed that the pantry smelled really clean—like someone had dumped a bunch of dryer sheets in there. Frank noticed it too and also recognized the smell as dryer-sheet fresh. We weren’t sure how she did that but we didn’t really mind it.

The next day I was eating breakfast and I thought my food tasted weird. After some investigating I realized my fork had the same smell as the pantry! I sniffed the rest of the forks in the drawer and they had the same scent. What did this woman do to our forks?

It gets weirder. The spoons, knives and little forks didn’t smell like dryer sheets even though they were in the same drawer as the forks.

So I took all the forks out and put them in the dishwasher. When they came out, the smell was gone.

Oh, but the story continues.

I put the forks back in the drawer and hours later, when I went to use one again, it had the smell. And what’s more, they ALL had it. But again, not the other silverware.

I knew then we were definitely dealing the beast, like the one on Seinfeld that started with a valet and got in Jerry’s car and Elaine’s hair and NOTHING they did would scare the smell away.

Now at least my beast isn’t a really bad smell; it’s just not something you want to taste.

So I figured maybe the cleaning lady wiped down the fork section of the silverware separator with something. I removed all the silverware from the separator and soaked it in soap and water in the sink.

Afterwards it smelled fine and the forks seemed free from the beast after airing out on the counter. But after I put them back in the drawer and eventually tried to use one, you guessed it—the BEAST!!

Oh, how I wish this blog was scratch and sniff so you could smell this not-really-bad-but-weird smell! And if anyone knows how to say “Hey, did you put some weird smelling cleaner in the fork section of my silverware drawer and also in my pantry?” in Portuguese, let me know.