That Smell in Mom's House Was Never the House. One Daughter Found Out What It Really Is

What happened in my mother's house last year changed the way I see my whole family. If you have ever walked into an older parent's home and noticed a certain smell, I think you'll be as stunned as I was when you hear why.

For four years I took care of Mom. I drove over every day after work. And every day, when I opened her front door, there it was. A faint, musty smell. Like a cedar chest that's been shut too long.

Mom bathed every morning of her life. Her kitchen floor was cleaner than mine. So I always just chalked it up to the house. Old carpet. Old curtains. Windows she never opened.

Mom passed last fall. My brother and I spent the winter clearing out her house, and every box we packed smelled like it. Then, this spring, my son Travis rode with me to the hardware store. At the first red light he rolled his window down. "Mom, your car smells like Grandma's place."

A week later my daughter Brooke stayed over. In the morning she said the guest room smelled "kind of like Grandma's closet." Different words. Same smell. And this time it wasn't Mom's house. It was mine.

"What I found out was so simple, and so unfair, I couldn't believe nobody had ever told us."

You can't see it, but it's on everything

I write for a living. Looking things up is my job. So I opened a notebook and started with the house, because that's what I'd blamed for four years. Here is everything I had already tried at Mom's place:

• Shampooed every carpet, twice. The smell was back in three days.
• Washed the curtains and the bedding twice a week.
• Plug-in air fresheners in every outlet. They only covered it.
• Paid a man to clean the air ducts.
• New pillows, laundry boosters, baking soda in the closet.
• A basket of fancy body wash and perfume for Mom. It just sat under her sink.

None of it worked, because the smell was never coming from the house. It was coming from Mom. And now it was coming from me.

As we get older, usually after 40, the skin starts making something called 2-nonenal. You say it "two-NO-nuh-nal." It's a natural oil with a faint, musty smell. It rubs off on collars, pillowcases and scarves. In a house, it rubs off on everything we lean against. The recliner. The couch. The car seat.

It isn't poor hygiene. It's biology. It happens to clean people.

"Now I could see why the smell always came back."

Why no amount of scrubbing could fix it

Now it all made sense. I could shampoo that carpet every week, and the oil would just come right back off the person sitting in the chair.

And the soap in Mom's shower couldn't stop it either. Because 2-nonenal is an oil, regular soap can't wash it off. Soap is built for water-based sweat and everyday dirt. The oil just stays put. Deodorant and perfume don't fix it. They only cover it up.

Then I read the part that broke my heart. Your own nose gets used to it. It's with you every day, so your brain quits noticing. That's why Mom could stand in her own living room and smell nothing at all. When she told me, "I wash every day, honey, I don't know what it is," she was telling the truth.

"I would need something that could actually lift that oil off, not just cover it."

That's when I remembered something that stopped me in my tracks.

A few weeks before, I ran into my friend Sheila in the cereal aisle. She told me her husband had moved to the spare room "for his back," and she'd finally figured out the real reason. She was using a persimmon soap now, and she said it had changed everything at home.

At first I brushed it off. A soap? I'd bought Mom every soap in the store. But Sheila said it wasn't about more soap. It was about what's in it, where you put it, and how long you leave it on. Nothing else had worked. So I figured, why not?

"What happened next had me stunned."

A different kind of soap

Most of us fight this smell with something that covers it up. Sprays, plug-ins, perfume, stronger body wash. Persimmon works a different way.

Persimmon is full of a natural tannin. The tannin sticks to that musty oil and lifts it off the skin, instead of covering it up. People in Japan have used persimmon for this for a long time.

The bar Sheila uses is called True Tannin. The company is named after the tannin, and the whole bar is built around it. They soften it with coconut oil, green tea and hyaluronic acid, so it doesn't dry out older skin. No sulfates, no parabens, no heavy synthetic fragrance.

Sheila's other tip mattered just as much as the soap. The oil doesn't sit all over you the same. It collects in five spots:

1. The back of the neck
2. Behind the ears
3. The chest
4. The upper back
5. The hairline

You lather those five spots and leave the lather on for about half a minute. That gives the tannin time to work. Then you rinse. And you give it 30 days for the full effect.

But does it really work? I tried it

I washed the five spots every morning and counted to thirty, slow. Here is how it went.

1. The first few days I couldn't tell a thing. My nose was the one thing in the house that couldn't check.
2. End of week one Brooke came by for coffee and hugged me with both arms. No quick pat on the back.
3. Week two Travis rode with me to the hardware store again. Both windows stayed up the whole way.
4. After a month Brooke's family stayed the whole weekend in my guest room. My grandson fell asleep on my couch with his head on my lap.

After a month, I knew I'd never go back. I finally felt at home in my own home again.

"I finally felt at home in my own home again."

What does it cost, and is it worth it?

I added up what I spent on Mom's house in those four years. The carpet shampooer. The duct cleaning. A plug-in for every outlet, month after month. The basket under her sink. It came to hundreds of dollars, and none of it touched the real problem.

A bar of True Tannin is $19.95, and one bar lasts about four weeks. Over 8,000 people have reviewed it, at 4.9 stars.

They also stand behind it. This is their promise, word for word: "Use it for a full 60 days. If you do not smell fresher, email us and we send back 100% of your money. The bar is yours to keep either way."

I can't go back and tell my mother any of this. I'd give anything to. She spent her last years washing with something that couldn't reach it, in a house her own daughter kept scrubbing, and nobody ever told her why.

So I'm telling you. If you know that smell, from a parent's house or your own car, it isn't the house. It never was. And it comes off.