Category: Italian Customs in Canada

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Why Does My Kitchen Always Stink?

kitchen odor

If you found this article, you might be wondering why your own kitchen stinks let alone my kitchen. After all, why should you care if my kitchen stinks? Let me tell you that if I explain why my kitchen stinks then you might realize why your kitchen stinks as well.

Before we get started into my personal Canadian-Italian kitchen, I’ll list some common reasons why people find that their kitchen smells mad and has nasty odors.

5 Common Reasons Kitchens Can Stink

  1. There are dead animals behind the walls or in the subfloor (under the floorboards). Although this is not uniquely to kitchens and could be the cause of bad smells anywhere in the home.
  2. There is rotting food somewhere in the cupboards, drawers, fridge or even hiding under the fridge or dishwasher. So check all hiding spots for rotting food, especially if you have kids or pets. I found one time my cat had hid a piece of meat behind the microwave and it took a week to find it.
  3. There could be mold, mildew or fungus growing under the sink, on the ceiling, behind the fridge, and some molds are way stinkier than others. Follow your nose or hire a professional to find the mold if you suspect this might be the problem.
  4. Your spouse or roommate is very bad at cleaning up after themselves and leave crumbs and dirty dishes lying about. Over time, if there is bad air circulation, just the fact of being unclean can make smells linger in the kitchen. One spot I’d check right now is under the garbage bag in your garbage bin. If there are nasty things in there then it’s proof you need better cleaning habits in the kitchen.
  5. This reason only applies if you live in a townhouse or an apartment building, or if you have a condo, or multiple kitchens in your home. In my experience living in apartments, whenever my neighbor beside me, because our kitchens laid thinly wall to wall to each other, cooked something, I could smell it all throughout my apartment for several hours. But this was a very old building, and for you, depending on the design of the apartments, could have a neighbor below or above who doesn’t turn on their oven hood fan when they cook smelly meals. If this is the case, you can kindly ask them to please turn on their oven hood fans when they’re cooking. If they refuse and it’s causing you harm, you might even be able to take legal action.

But Why Does My (The Author’s) Kitchen Stink?

I didn’t fully mean this to be satirical when I thought of it but it might sound that way. The truth is, my kitchen stinks because I cook Italian food everyday and have really bad air circulation. If you came into my house right now you might crinkle up your nose and run away. Unless you like Italian food, of course…

Thanks for reading!

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Repairing Appliances in Canada After Growing Up in Italy

One of the first things I noticed about Canada when I moved here from Italy was the different popular brand names of appliances. Then, after living here a little while I was astonished at how all the electric plugs are different. Even the standards of wiring in electronics and measurement systems are all strange.

When I started to look for work as an appliance repair technician in Victoria BC, it was as if I had to relearn everything from the beginning. It was interesting to learn that after specializing in a trade you can move to another part of the world and become a beginner again, as customs vary wherever you go. I just assumed that working as an appliance repair technician would be the same everywhere, but I was wrong.

I didn’t even have a travel adapter let alone knew I needed one when I arrived in Canada. It was frustrating to learn that I needed to buy new phone chargers and a charger for my laptop. Now that I’ve been working for a while I’ve gotten used to the differences. I fear that when or if I ever work in Italy again that everything will once again need to be relearned.

Some of the major appliance brands here we also have in Italy, so I’m familiar with fixing those, but most of them are new to me and fixing a Samsung washer is a lot different than fixing a Maytag washer. It took months to become familiar with the appliance models here. In Victoria BC there are a lot of luxury homes with expensive appliances that take up a lot of space, a very different culture than the smaller and simpler appliances in households across rural Tuscany.

I have a feeling I still have a lot to learn, as almost every week I come across an appliance I’ve never seen before, and must learn how to repair it with nothing but the Internet to guide me. Sometimes it’s interesting to delve into a PDF version of an old appliance manual from 2002. Other times it’s beyond frustrating to spend half the day learning where a single wire is supposed to go.

Now that I’m a full fledged Italian-Canadian with a career, I’m grateful nonetheless that I get to work in such a beautiful place and I try to keep my complaining to a minimum. Still, it never amazes me how two places with shared history in the Western world can be so different from each other.