First of all, I'm glad you can breathe again, but secondly is this a reason that some people drown themselves in perfume or have so may fragrant candles going in their house that one is almost asphyxiated up on entering?

I know the perfume problem has been around forever. Some people seem to think that if a little is good, a whole lot is much better. I used to work with a woman who continually left a trail of Gerogio in her wake. The guys used to call her "the toxic cloud" - not the image she wanted to present, I'm sure.

And now this over-perfumed trend seems to pervade homes. Between the scented candles and potpourri, it's enough to give anyone with a normal sense of smell a headache.

Yes, everything now has a scent and is anti-microbial. It's all produced in a laboratory and we bombard ourselves with it on a daily basis. I suspect over perfuming oneself is a byproduct of their olfactory nerves becoming numb from overuse.

I occasionally use a perfume, but not on a daily basis, because I work in greenhouses and outdoors and floral scents attract stinging insects. A good scented soap(real soap, not detergent bar) leaves enough of an aroma on the skin to last from shower to shower.

On the inside of my house, the smells I find most pleasant are just good honest soaps and essential oils used in cleaning and the fresh air from open windows. IOW, Murphy's oil soap and the hint of ammonia from the window wash or bleach from scrubbing the counter, or Pine/citrus essential oils from scrubbing the floors. They don't compete with the good old smell of fresh air after an hour or so.

Doncha think a lot of it has to do with how homes are closed up nowadays? My windows are open any time it's above where I set my thermostat to heat. Moving air is a great deodorant.

Years ago, I read that you can only smell your own perfume for about 2 minutes. Your nose adjusts and then ignores that aroma. Because of that, many people literally cannot smell how much perfume or cologne or aftershave they have doused on.

I worked with a lovely gal who had an awful [to me] tendency to apply too, too, too much. One day, when a co-worker asked why she was wearing so much (you could smell her from a 100 feet away), she looked surprised and said she thought she had forgotten to put any on! The capper came when she had to be hospitalized for a week; later she told us that she when she returned home, she could smell the perfume wafting from her apartment as soon as she got out of the elevator. That was a shock to her, but not to us.

I think it's not just candles, pot pourri, and colognes... have you noticed a distinct increase in the aromic pervasiveness of soaps, shampoos, fabric 'fresheners', etc. being far stronger than before. For years I used 'Dove' bath soap. A year ago I picked up a package of the bars and, OMG, it smelled so strong I couldn't stand to have the wrapped package in the shopping cart. This is not a sudden change in me, but in the manufacturer's formulation. Ditto for several brand-name laundry detergents and softners.

I'm told that as we age, we'll lose a great deal of our sense of smell. Apparently I haven't lost enough of it to enable a happy toleration of the increase in perfumeries.

Yes, I think you are right, Meldy. When I market, if I have any products like that in the poke, the whole car reeks of it. I don't use commercial soaps anymore and haven't for years. One of the ladies who used to frequent the GP is a soap maker and that is the only bath or toilet soap in my house. Ditto shampoos. If I don't wash my hair with her soaps (yes you can, because they are so pure) I use a baby shampoo without all the chemicals in it.

Cleaning agents at my house are very basic, so I need very few of them. I searched the shelves at the market for a soap called Octagon, Colgate makes. It is a big seller overseas, but not here because it's not scented up to high heaven and is just, well, soap. I think the stinky trend is for the most part consumer driven. So, their market is not here for that product. It can be used for so many different uses from house cleaning to laundry.

Ironically, the whole time, I was thinking "No wonder Europeans think we stink! Too much!!!". Guess I agree with you.

Rob, glad you've found relief. Going back to the "rules" we learned, I was taught that you spritzed your cologne into the air then walked through it especially for ordinary daily office wear. You just got a light pleasant scent that way. In the evening you could spray directly on wrists and ankles...and a touch perhaps down your decolletage...LOL

I don't care for the scented candles or air fresheners. Holiday gatherings are particularly apt to be overwhelming with candles in every room...spoiled the taste of the food for me. I didn't like Lilac Blossom with my turkey! LOL josh

My hayfever was a nightmare all my life, and after some amazing homeopathic/Chinese care, it went away. Yes Rob, it's like being let out of jail!! Suddenly free of this HUGE discomfort, and begin to notice what it's like not to itch, tear up, sneeze.....After ten years of freedom - I have been here in Israel for that long - I have become slowly allergic to the local flora and this Spring had my first full blown allergy attack in a decade!!
I pine for America, she of the marketing options and public suport for less or non-perfumed products at reasonable prices. DG adores anything highly, artificially perfumed and it drives me nuts. In the shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, softener, hand soap, floor cleaner, dryer sheets, deodorant, on and on..... The efficiency of the product itself is much less of a question than how it smells, and is bought on that basis. Anything unscented is considered "natural" and commands prohibitive prices; the cheap stuff for us working folks is all drenched. When I choose a perfume, that's what I want to smell like, not the nasty amalgam of all the personal products. Choosing to use natural cleaning products and personal stuff is possible here, but I don't let on about it at work, or the other women will think I'm stranger than they do now.

Once you start using natural soaps, you never want to go back to the commercial stuff. Like Suzy, I too have an old GP friend who makes soaps & I usually get some from her for my birthday & Christmas & between those two events I've enough for a whole year.

DH hates all the scented stuff even more than I do so we never have them in the house.

And Suzy, you're also right about people never opening up their houses to the fresh air, especially down here in the South. I remember when we were looking at houses in Dallas. We found one that had been re-done in an older neighborhood that was nice but when I was looking around I saw there were no screens on the windows. When I mentioned that to the realtor she asked me why I cared. When I told her that they were needed for when you opened the windows, she looked at my rather quizzically & in all seriousness asked, "Why would you ever want to do that?"