Understanding “Old Person Smell” and How to Keep Your Chicago Home Fresh

Between work, family, and enjoying everything Chicago has to offer, keeping your space smelling fresh can feel like a constant battle. Whether you’re noticing changes in your own home or caring for aging loved ones, understanding the science behind household odors can help you maintain a cleaner, more inviting environment.

What Exactly Is “Old Person Smell”?

We’ve all walked into spaces with distinct smells we associate with certain places or people. There’s actually scientific evidence for what’s commonly called “old person smell” – known as “kareishū” in Japanese, which translates to “the smell of aging years.” This isn’t about hygiene but rather natural biological changes that occur as we age.

After age 40, our body chemistry undergoes significant changes. Hormones shift, skin production alters, and these changes affect how we smell. Researchers have identified a specific compound called 2-nonenal that’s responsible for this distinctive scent.

The Science Behind the Scent

Remember sebum from your teenage acne years? As we age, sebum contents change along with our body’s ability to break down certain compounds. Omega-7 becomes more prominent, and with our skin’s natural antioxidant defense declining, oxidation increases – similar to how an apple turns brown when exposed to air.

This oxidation process releases 2-nonenal through our sebum. Combine this with slower skin turnover and less breathable fabrics, and you can understand how this compound affects your home’s scent.

Practical Solutions for a Fresher Home

Now that we understand what causes these odors, let’s explore practical ways to manage them throughout your living space.

Personal Care Adjustments

While you can’t wash away 2-nonenal with just water, focused hygiene practices can significantly reduce its presence:

• Focus on areas with high sweat or oil glands: back, chest, underarms, and behind ears
• Use gentle cleansers – even oil-based options work well
• Regularly exfoliate with simple solutions like sugar/salt with olive oil or a wet washcloth
• Consider dry brushing to help skin turnover faster

Clothing and Fabric Care

Your clothing choices and laundry habits play a crucial role in odor management:

• Choose natural fibers like cotton and linen over synthetics
• Avoid rewearing items that sit close to the body
• Invest in quality laundry detergent with proper enzymes
• Use sunlight as a free deodorizing method for stubborn smells

If you’re struggling to keep up with laundry demands, consider professional home cleaning services that include fabric care.

Bedding and Linens Maintenance

Soft surfaces in your home are odor magnets. For bedding specifically:

• Wash sheets weekly to remove sweat, dead skin cells, and body oils
• Check mattress and pillow protectors regularly
• Launder or replace smelly pillows
• Consider deep cleaning help for mattress refreshment

Whole-Home Odor Control Strategies

Beyond personal items, your entire living space benefits from regular odor management:

• Use HEPA air purifiers to circulate and clean air
• Open windows for cross-breezes when weather permits
• Vacuum regularly with focus on carpets and rugs
• Use fabric refresher sprays containing cyclodextrin
• Place odor absorbers like activated charcoal or baking soda around the house

For comprehensive results, fast cleaning services can tackle multiple odor sources simultaneously.

When to Seek Additional Help

While aging-related smells are normal, sometimes odors can indicate underlying health issues like diabetes, infections, or medication side effects. If you notice sudden changes or have concerns, consult your healthcare provider.

For household odors that persist despite your best efforts, remember that cleaning services in Chicago like Jikas Cleaning are available to help you get your space cleaned thoroughly and efficiently.

Embrace the Changes With Confidence

Understanding that “old person smell” is a natural biological process helps remove any embarrassment. With these practical strategies, you can maintain a fresh-smelling home that feels welcoming to all.

If you need assistance maintaining your Chicago home, our Chicago cleaning company makes it easy to schedule a cleaning that addresses odor concerns at their source.

Have you had this experience where you walk into a space and you are hit with a smell and it’s a distinct smell. It’s a smell that you always associate with a certain place or a certain food or a certain person. Well, guess what? That smell also exists for old people. It’s a real smell. And it sounds really rude to say, but there is scientific evidence for this old person smell. In fact, there’s even a Japanese word for this. It’s ka ishue, and that translates into the smell of gaining years. Now, this isn’t a hygiene issue. This is actually a biological issue. As we age, our body changes and this smell just comes off of us. So, in this video, we’re going to talk about what old people smell is all about, what you can do about it, what you just need to accept, and how you can prevent it from emanating from your home. Give this video a thumbs up for that piece of art over there. And just a quick reminder, if you haven’t done so already, to subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. And by the way, this video is brought to you by Makerscle. You can check it out at makerscle.com or makersclean.ca. It’s our sister company where we sell premium microfiber cleaning tools and more. Let’s talk about what old person smell actually is. As we get older, our body chemistry changes, hormones, the different things that we are producing that come off of our skin. All of that changes as well. And after the age of 40, by the way, I’m currently 43 as we’re shooting this video. Some of these processes in our body that create old person smell start to change. Researchers discovered a specific compound in old person smell and it’s called two nonenol. And you don’t have to worry about remembering the name. You just have to understand that that is the culprit here. To understand a bit of the science behind why this happens, think about sebum. This is something that we are often first introduced to as teenagers going through puberty. And as someone who had real bad acne growing up, I was intimately familiar with seabbum. Yes, I had lots of it going on. As you age, the seabbum contents change along with our body’s ability to break things down in certain ways. And one of the things that is more prominent is omega7. For example, our skin’s natural antioxidant defense declines with age. This results in increased oxidation. I want you to think about an apple. If you slice that apple in half and expose it to air for too long, it starts to turn brown or it starts rusting. So that whole process, that is where the smell comes from. Omega7 is released through our sebum. We can’t break it down as quickly. There’s a byproduct called two nonenol, and that’s the one that has the smell. Now, compound this with slower skin turnover as well as perhaps not breathable fabrics, and you can start to understand how this compound can really add to the smell of your home, your body, and your clothes. So, now that we know what happens, the question is, how do we deal with it? You can’t exactly wash this off with just water. First up, let’s talk about showering and bathing because this is one of the areas that can really help contribute to a reduction in this smell. Now, I expect everyone has pretty regular and decent hygiene practices, but a few things that you really want to pay close attention to are areas with a lot of sweat or oil glands. So, think about your back, your chest, your underarms, even the area behind your ears. Anywhere where you’re regularly sweating or there’s an increased amount of oil production is an area that you’re going to want to focus on. Now, you can use a gentle cleanser. Something even like an oil cleanser might be really nice. But make sure that you don’t get swept up in the marketing of things like expensive soaps being sold to get rid of the smell of two nonol. I think honestly that’s just a marketing opportunity and I don’t think you need to spend that extra money. Another thing you can do is regularly exfoliate. You don’t need anything fancy. You can do this with something as simple as sugar or salt and a little bit of olive oil. You can even use a wet washcloth to do it. But the idea is you want to slough off dead skin cells. Even a dry brush would be great for this. And what that does is it helps your skin turn over faster so you’re not clinging on to that too noon and all as much. When it comes to clothing, if you want to make sure that your clothes aren’t picking up that smell and emanating it, the first thing to think about is the type of material that your clothing is made out of. more natural fibers are less likely to hold on to odors, whereas synthetics love to hold on to odors. So things like nylon or athleisure or polyester will become stinkier faster and even when you launder them, they’re less likely to want to release those smelly compounds. So the bottom line is stick to natural fabrics like cotton and linen if you want to be fresher smelling. Another thing to be mindful of is not to rewear clothing between washes. I think in general this is an important practice because if I wear this t-shirt again and I sweat a little in the underarm area, the second I put this t-shirt on, it’s going to start smelling again. Well, the same thing is going to happen if you have two nonenol coming off your body. As soon as things start to heat up a bit, you’re going to give off that scent. So, try not to rewear your stuff. Now, of course, if it’s a blazer or a second layer, that’s no problem. But something that sits close to the body, please don’t rewear that. You also want to make sure that you’re laundrying with a good detergent. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever a time where you should be laundering with not a good detergent. I talk about this all the time, but anytime it comes down to launding something, you really want your clothes to come clean. And if you think about what we talked about, how sebum and dead skin cells um you know get stuck in your clothing and that lingers and holds on to a smell, you want to release that during the laundry process. A powerful laundry detergent is going to be able to do that. Something that’s like a budget friendly laundry detergent, something that doesn’t have enzymes or doesn’t have the right kind of chemistry to really get the job done, is not going to let your clothes smell fresh. So, it’s an investment, but it’s worth it. You can also just use the sun as a free source of deodorizing. If you notice that there’s something that gives off a particularly strong smell, you can just hang it outside, let the sunlight hit it for a couple of hours, and you’ll notice that smell dissipates. When it comes to bedding and linens, these are soft surfaces in the house that really cling on to odors. Other things where you might notice this would be rugs or carpets, as well as drapes. So, we won’t cover those off because that’s just regular maintenance like vacuuming and steam cleaning. But for your bed specifically, you want to make sure that you’re washing your sheets on a very regular basis. I suggest washing them once a week. And that’s because we sweat in bed and we also let off dead skin cells. We’re also putting our body oils all over these bed sheets. I know for me, I sleep with a whole bunch of stuff on, skin treatments, hair treatments, stuff on my hands, stuff on my feet. Like my sheets are a disaster. So, I have to wash mine very regularly. But it’s important to do this because if you walk into a bedroom and you notice that it has a very stuffy smell, it’s often from the bed itself. So make sure that you’re laundering your sheets regularly to get rid of that smell. And you also want to check your mattress protector, your pillow protector, and even your pillows because if those are smelly, too, it might be time to launder or replace them. When it comes to freshening up the smell inside your home, a lot of the standard principles apply. You can use a HEPA air purifier in your house. Just run that and that will help get rid of the smell. You can also open up your windows or doors and just let a nice cross breeze through when and where it makes sense to do so. Vacuuming on a regular basis is going to help. You can even use a fabric refresher spray or an airspray. A product like Fabreze has cycllodextrone in it which can trap and drop heavier odorcausing particles. If you spray that, it’ll fall to the ground. You can vacuum that up and that really does help in removing scent. Now, if you don’t want to have a scented Freze experience, they do have unscented available. Again, this is not a Fbreze sponsored video at all. I’m just letting you know that something like a Fbreze will work really well in this case. You can also use odor absorbers like activated charcoal or baking soda and put those in small areas around the house to help absorb any kind of stinky or off smells. One thing to be aware of is that as we age and as we change, our body can definitely emit different smells. However, sometimes these smells can be indicative of a bigger issue. For example, diabetes, an infection, or something that happens because you’re on a certain medication. I’m not a doctor, but I’m here to let you know if you do notice something or you’re concerned, please visit your doctor and have a conversation with them about that. So, now you know that old people smell is a real thing and it happens to everyone. So, you don’t need to feel bad. You don’t need to feel embarrassed. And now you know exactly what to do. So, you don’t have to admit it or smell it yourself. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is kids say the darnest things. And sometimes kids are a little too honest with their parents or their grandparents and can really embarrass you. And I would love to know in the comments down below, what has a kid said to you that has been really ridiculous or embarrassing or funny? I will tell you a very uh funny story that just happened to me over the weekend. Can’t believe I’m saying this on camera, but why not? Uh Riley and I went to Target. We went to visit the US for the weekend and uh we were going through the bra section and I said, “Oh, I need a bra, but I’m not going to buy one cuz you’re with me.” And she shouted out at the top of her lungs, “Mommy, you have really big boobies.” So, I’m really glad that everyone in the Buffalo Target is now aware of that. So, let me know your embarrassing story in the comments down below. Now, if you want to know some of my expert laundry tips, some ways that you can get your clothes smelling and looking fresh and lasting for a really long time, check out this video right over here. And if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.