So today I decided to open up the house and do some cleaning this afternoon while Timmy napped.

One of my tasks was to clean our downstairs 1/2 bathroom. For those who’ve heard my complaints, the toilet in our 1/2 bath has had a strange odor that I’m sure is attributed to having to potty train two little boys. I’ve tried everything — strong air fresheners, strong chemical cleaners, natural cleaners, and even hit up the stain/odor remover section at Petsmart. Many of those products have covered the odor for a little bit, but after a while the smell would come back.

I’ve gone so far as to get on my hands and knees and get my nose down to the caulking between the toilet and the floor and see if that was the problem (it wasn’t). EEEWWW!

Incidentally, the odor arbitrarily disappeared around Thanksgiving…hey…no complaints here!

My motivation today for hitting the downstairs bathroom was mainly to clean up all the dried soap residue from our sink…the boys tend to get overzealous with the soap. In fact, I’ve recently switched from liquid to bar soap after noticing the boys using one container of liquid soap in about a week.

So I clean — the sink, toilet, and floor. Scrub/wipedown with some Mr. Clean solution.

And now the odor is back.

What the hell? Argh!

PS: In the townhouse we rented in Seoul, the bathrooms had a drain in the middle of the floor. I would wipe down everything with Scrubbing Bubbles, then turn on the shower (connected with a hose) and just spray down the whole room: floor to ceiling. That was awesome!