I trained mightily (by my standards, which means not very much) for my recent trip to India, which involved a whopping 36 hours of travel. Each way. Mostly I learned I need to take some heavy, heavy drugs with me so I can sleep on the airplane when I need to, along with this excellent alternative to the crappy generic traveler U shaped neck pillows.
Planes are so ridiculously noisy though, my ears ring for a day afterwards. Other people I trust (several of them actually) recommended those Bose anti-noise headphones, even after trying other stuff, and the wirecutter strongly agrees, so… I ordered a pair.
But here’s the important bit: because I only travel seriously maybe 2 times a year, and I guess I am a cheapskate or something, I didn’t want to spend a lot on them. And the wired-only model, which I prefer, is no longer really available new, it’s been fully replaced by the bluetooth wireless version. So I purchased used headphones from Amazon.
I think you can see where this is going.
The headphones came and they work great and are in fine shape. But. But. They smell like an older lady who wears a lot of … let’s say … “product”. I immediately noticed the smell after unboxing them. At first I thought well … maybe this is now my fetish? Wearing things that smell like older ladies? Maybe that’s my jam? That’s what I’m into? It’s like the olfactory equivalent of cheating on your wife with a sexy cougar, or something.
But no. Holy crap these things are overpowering to even have around. After a few hours I wiped them down with baby wipes as thoroughly as I could, and banished them outside the house to bake in the sun for a day. This helped… a tiny, tiny bit. Then I thought, well, I’ll do it again. I wiped them down, sprayed them with some anti-shoe odor spray I have that we use on the kid’s shoes (it works!), and left them out in the sun again.
Picked them up after a day to smell and… well, I hope you like what Catherine Denueve probably smells like. Part of the problem, I’m guessing, is that these headphones spent the majority of their life in the zipped-up case just marinating in whatever scented product this lady wore when she used the headphones. And I’m sure she was a very nice lady! Who used a LOT of product!
I looked up a bunch of articles on how to get smell / perfume out of stuff and they were pretty worthless. Leave it outside in the sun to get air and breeze, yes, that’s obvious. Put it in a box with baking soda or vinegar or charcoal to “absorb” the odor, I … guess that would work? I dunno.
Finally out of desperation I remembered we have these heavy duty Clorox bleach wipes we used for the kids potty training cleaning. I grabbed a few and furiously wiped the hell down out of the whole thing, the headset, the (removed) earcushions, the case inside and out, the cable. Left it out overnight again and… my god FINALLY something is working! It smells noticeably less!
Since I could suddenly “smell” success on the horizon, I executed another full scale, maxtreme furious Clorox bleach wiping, this time really dripping the Clorox wipe sauce in the earcushions in particular (they have vents on the backside once you remove them), with a bit more attention to the blue inside fabric covering of the earpiece as well. The top part that touches the head is also fabric so that got a Clorox wipe drenching as well.
(Yes, I am avoiding getting the electronics bits that are presumably behind that blue fabric wet. And of course batteries are out of it.)
Given the improvement yesterday, I’m hoping this might finally do the trick, or at least maybe one or two more Clorox wipe cycles might completely eradicate the smell.
The funny thing about this, is I’ve really struggled to find anything lately that makes me happy or that I enjoy. And for some reason, the challenge of removing this lady’s, uh, scent… from these headphones, was perhaps the happiest I have been in weeks, maybe months. Yes yes I could order and pay for whatever the hell I want.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
But if you ever need to get an odor or smell out of something, I recommend a profuse, repeated clorox bleach wiping, along with leaving the item out in the sun. Hell, maybe they’ll still even work after I’m done. Maybe I’ll work after I’m done. But I doubt it.