Mother always swore that the smell of gloss paint could be eliminated by chopping an onion and placing saucers containing chopped onion around the room.
I well remember my Father painting away, with his eyes streaming, muttering about "Old Wives Tales".
They belonged to the generation that "redid" a room every Spring so the old boy suffered annually but, of course, Mother had an answer ~ "It's your hayfever dear, you know you get it every Spring"
He did get his own back the year he redecorated the kitchen. From Heaven knows where he got it into his head that he would gloss the ceiling and thus make it easier to wipe clean. Mother complained for months of steam condensing on the gloss ceiling and cold drips falling on her head as she cooked. The upside to this was that we no longer had to eat over-boiled and soggy sprouts or cabbage. The following year he went back to whitewash for ceilings .... well this was the 1950s.
