I can only smell smoke on people right after they’ve had a cigarette. When we’re at my in-law’s house and my mother in law goes outside for a smoke, when she comes in the smell on her clothes is really, really strong. It’s pretty bad, even if she had a coat on and has taken it off. It’s always noticeable right after she’s smoked, but other times I don’t smell it. Right now the house they are renting is “smoke free,” but whenever they live someplace where they can smoke inside, she does. I remember once helping her repaint her office in their old house. She spent a lot of time on the computer in that unventilated room, smoking most of the time. When we took the pictures off the walls, you could see the original color of the paint not stained by nicotine and smoke. It was such a dramatic difference. And don’t even get me started on cleaning the windows. :( Even if I smoked, I’d never smoke in my house after seeing that.
Also, I always kind of hated having my kids spend the night with their grandparents when they smoked in the house. Even though they smoked outside while the kids were there, the kids would come home in the morning smelling so strongly of stale cigarettes I had to give them baths and wash their hair as soon as possible. All of their clothes and things had to be washed right away. I’m not even as sensitive to the smell as other people, but when you go to give your toddler a kiss on the head and she smells like she spent the night at a seedy club, it’s pretty nasty. And that was just from the residual smell in their house. The kids were never in the home with them actually smoking. I love that they live someplace where they have to smoke outside because when my kids are at their house for a while they come home still smelling like little kids.
When you live in a house where people smoke, you don’t notice it after a while. You might think your house doesn’t smell like smoke if you smoke inside, but to other people it does.