Rethinking fake flowers in bathrooms

The houseboat owner is back in town. She called me to ask if she could swing by and pick up one thing that she needed right now. I was dealing with the movers today so she let herself into the houseboat.

When I got back tonight, I wondered what she thought of the place. I know it is cleaner than how she left it, but I also moved a few things into a closet. In the dining area, I moved a few of her Jesus portraits. I left the 12 portraits that she had hanging on the bulkhead, and moved 4 that she had placed all around the dining table. I have no problems with Jesus. But I didn't feel comfortable having people over to the houseboat with Jesus staring at them while they drink their beers.

I also moved a huge set of fake flowers that she had in the bathroom to the entry room. They were so big that they covered up half of the mirror and just took up way too much room in a tiny bathroom (though they did create a nice visual color balance in the room). Unfortunately the flowers have absorbed the bathroom odor-- even after being out of the bathroom for several weeks, they still smell like the bathroom and make the entry smell like the bathroom.

To describe the odor, I need to first describe the toilet. It is a special marine head that grinds the waste product before sending it to the storage tank. The grinding makes the resulting product smell a little like burnt hair. The bathroom sort of smells like day-old diapers. Most of the smell is confined to the bathroom, though now the entry smells like it because I moved the flowers.

It could be much worse. One of the houseboats that I visited had a toilet that burned the waste product. The entire houseboat had a very strong smell. It was a beautiful boat and I would have loved to live there, but I kept smelling it for the next day afterwards. And it definitely did not smell like roses.

The marine plumbing guys came by and emptied out the waste tank last week while I was at work. Ever since, the smell in the bathroom seems to be noticeably less.

But I can still smell it in the entry with those flowers. I'll move everything back to their original positions before I move-out, but I wonder if the houseboat owner realizes that her fake flowers don't smell anywhere close to real flowers.