My husband says I have a bionic nose.
Any scent, any time, any place. I smell it at least ten minutes before it registers with his (or in his opinion, with any normal person’s) nose.
Consequently, more than clutter piled on the dining room table or dishes in the sink . . . as a slob, I’m most paranoid about whether or not my house smells bad.
You know I have allergies. Major ones. Meaning, good scents that cover up bad scents don’t really work for me. Because if they’re strong enough to cover up something, they have to be pretty darn strong, and that means my sinuses clog and my ears start itching.
It’s not that I can’t have a single good-smelling thing in my house, it’s just that I can’t use a good smelling thing to make up for not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
Even though I have an exceptional sense of smell, I get paranoid because I know it can adjust. Remember walking into your Jr. High locker room after a summer off? Remember how it stunk like nothing else even though it had been “airing out” for three months? But then, a few weeks in, you didn’t really notice it anymore.
In college, whenever I’d go home for a weekend, I was always shocked to walk back into my dorm’s hallway and be hit with the old-building-how-exactly-does-it-end-up-having-such-a-unique-smell . . . smell.
What if that’s how it is with my house? What if my own nose gave up a long time ago and quit registering the smell of socks-long-lost-under-the-couch?
The best way I’ve found to keep my house smelling clean?
Ummm . . . clean it.
Knowing that my bathrooms have been wiped down, my toilets have been scrubbed, that there aren’t any who-knows-how-long-they’ve-been-there dishes in the sink . . . all those things let me rest more easily when I do have to shove clutter in the master bedroom and let someone in the front door unexpectedly.
Here’s the thing. I like it when my house smells clean. In fact, I love when it smells clean. (I know . . . yet another contradiction to what normal people probably assume about slobs, right?) But after all of my anecdotal research on my own home, I’ve decided that my favorite scent . . . is no scent at all.
Not that I only use unscented cleaning products. I love anything with a citrus-ey or fruity smell. But my goal is not to make my house smell like cleaning products, it’s to get it clean.
And clean . . . equals no scent . . . . equals no stink . . . equals this slob being able to relax and enjoy my home.
I blogged about irritating fragrances recently and how "clean" doesn't smell specifically of anything…
http://ambularlogic.blogspot.com/2010/10/citizens-for-fragrance-free-america.html
Shaking my head in agreement with your whole post!
time traveling post here… but THANK YOU for this. I have severely bad chemical sensitivity meaning I’m allergic to fragrances…. which are in EVERYTHING. I can’t walk from my house to my car (IN my driveway) without a filter mask on if the neighbours have laundry on because it triggers an anaphylactic reaction. And even toilet paper has fragrance now! I wish more people could get used to having things that didn’t have to stink and make people sick!
Laughing because of the Pine-Sol sponsorship of this particular post, because to me Pine-Sol is the smell of clean. I've been know to pour it in my toilet & leave it for a little while just to make the house smell "clean". LOL
We like a good 'smelly' house… over a bad 'smelly' house… and I worry about that too… But, like you, have I just gotten used to it or does it really smell good in here? I'm working on it. Love your blog. Thanks.
Have you ever had a smell you couldn't find? Did it drive you nuts? About the time you start thinking maybe its part of the house that you never noticed, you find it. Then you dance a happy dance. What? I'm the only one?
Shannon, you're definitely NOT the only one on that!
caramelchica, i totally agree with you on pine-sol being the scent of clean. each week, i pour a bit of spine-sol in the sink in our mudroom and leave it throughout the week so we are greeted with that smell whenever we walk in the door. i love it!
The house and the car. When I roll down the car window at the drive-in I do both sides so there is a cross breeze in case we are horrible and don’t know it. I can particularly smell dust, in the carpet, when we haven’t vacuumed in a while. I drive myself mad with the sniffing and exclaiming about it.
When the house is really clean I think it smells like fresh clean wind and that is my favorite smell.
haha! My husband says the same thing about me – that I have a bionic nose! I share the same phobia about my house and worry that it always stinks and I just have gotten used to it. I ask close friends and my sister all the time to tell me the truth…does it really stink?! No one has ever said it does, but it remains a phobia!