I love my dad, I really do but he moved in 6 months ago and now there is a smell in the house. Mom raised us to be very clean. I was raised around farms, construction and blue collar world but we were always clean. Dad does is laundry but his bedroom is stating to smell and now the living room he is in as well. He told me he showers every other day due to dry skin (I have sever dry skin myself since birth). I think it is every 4 to 5 days, not sure. I work at home and I do not hear his shower run at all. While he was away I aired his bed linens outside (moms old trick) washed all his sheets and cover. His laundry is in a hamper but the odor will knock you out upon entrance to the room! He does his own laundry regularly (not as often with his sheets). It is getting worse. He has no infections or sores it is just BO. He has been covering it up with Old Spice (I am really sensitive to perfumes, migraines). How to do tell him to bathe. New battle ground for me. My wife is not happy, we keep a clean house and we are spraying odor sprays at night in the room but it does not help. Now it may affect us if we do not have people over as his living room is at the entrance to our front door.
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I help her shower once a week (she just turned 95) which is the best we're going to do at this age. So getting your dad some help might be a good answer. My mom was too tired and too afraid of falling to shower on her own. She'd tell me she would and then wouldn't. I kept track and after enough time passed, I started going over to help her. Now it's standard that I help her shower every week. You gotta do what you gotta do.
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I struggled with this for a while continuing to make subtle hints and then I got fed up and just asked him one day why he wasn't showering as regularly as he used to and he said the whole process of showering tired him out. So with his permission I hired a bath aide. He was a little unsure about it and after she had come over about 3-4 times he decided he preferred to shower on his own, and he did. Problem solved. The bath aide was great, she even trimmed my dad's beard, but he preferred to shower solo.
But I had to have an honest talk with him. I ran around with air fresheners too but until he and I sat down and discussed the issue nothing got resolved. It was a difficult and embarrassing discussion to have with my dad but I'm glad we had it.