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.
