how do you "de-smell" old straps etc?

Looking for a bit of hive mind advice here, peeps

A while back, I bought a load of stuff in an auction;


The first lot yielded a load of busted Seikos, some of which I've had fixed and kept, some of which I stripeed some parts from and got shot of the rest. This lot above cost a lot of money - over £1K in hand, about half of which I've recouped by selling off the bits I don't want. I've kept a couple of bracelets and other parts, and a few of the watches, but mostly junk that's not worth fixing. Hardly an astute purchase.

The second lot was even worse:


I'd spotted some NSA bracelets in there and thought they might be worth a look, but in the end it's mostly Garbaj, quite a few broken movements etc, and pretty much everything was disposed of on eBay. Cost me over £400 and I probably got that back. Again, mostly a waste of time.

BUT, the (broken) black Citizen Cosmotron had a 19mm Tropic Star strap fitted, and I thought that would do the trick on another watch...



As with a lot of stuff that's probably been in a musty old drawer for decades, it was pretty smelly - the kind of dusty, musty, old stuff smell that seems to never shift.

I might have run it through an ultrasonic cleaner, I can't recall. I took the strap and soaked it for a day or two in minty mouthwash. That did for (most?) of the musty smell but whoooa, now it stank of MINT to the point where it would be impossible to wear without being conscious of it. So next, I tried putting it in a Ziploc bag with some crushed coffee beans for a few days, and that took the edge of the minty smell and added a fairly pleasant coffee odour.

Thing is, it still smells quite strongly - I was wondering, what would anyone else do to neutralize it, given that the strap had maybe 3 or 4 decades to acquire the musty stink in the first place...

Oh, and here it is in situ now...

Thanks 😀 Baking soda & vinegar seems to be a universal cure-all for household tasks...

Yeah, thanks for that image... 🤮

This one looks barely used, and since it's rubber then I figure it's not going to be as imbued with someone else's sweat etc that a leather one might.


That's a great idea - I've got a whole thing of Cafiza espresso machine cleaner that I might try...

Go skiing for a week with one pair of socks, then seal them entwined in a ziplock for another week and Bobs your uncle…

And then in 5 years, the next owner will be on here asking, "I got this strap that smells like an old tramp's feet.. any idea how to get the stink away?"

I'd say @dsio said it best, exactly what I was thinking when I read the topic.

Back when I had the car shop I bought an old 912 from a customer. He stored it in his barn and generously sprinkled the entire interior, seats and floor carpeting with moth balls. Well it was so unbearable we took the whole thing apart-seats, carpets and door panels and scrubbed the hell out of them. Stuff still stunk to high heavens. My dad the chemist/engineer said "lay everything out in the sun for a few days, that'll fix it".
That worked. 👍