Face it: life stinks. It’s the season of soggy boots on the wet mat, wool mittens dripping dry, wet pets and paw prints on the rug, and the aroma of soaked construction coveralls hanging by the door.
Hockey equipment just adds to the allure of that “welcome home” scent that greets us every time we turn the key in our door (this might be why nobody comes to visit).
I am sure none of you can relate. You probably have mudrooms off the garage with separate entrances and a nice big door to shove all the crap behind. I would honestly take that renovation over a new kitchen. Give me a spot to hide the evidence of just how disorganized and overloaded we are with stuff – I’ll take that over granite counter tops any day.
There is an entire shelf in the grocery store dedicated to odour control, with candles that promise to spread the odour of pine trees, and plug-ins that will make our homes smell like a citrus breeze from Hawaii, or cone-shaped fixtures with scented wax centers that, over time, will turn your living room into the fragrant air of fresh powder snow from the mountaintops of Switzerland. Right. Okay.
There is even a motion-activated scent machine that sits on a table and shoots out wafts of perfumed air when you walk by. I used to have a dog that did that too (not the waft we were hoping for, but I digress).
I’ve fallen for all these gimmicks and it turns out I am quite scent-sitive. I am allergic to artificial scents of any kind. The end result is not pretty. We’re talking migraine-induced, sinus burning, run-outside-screaming side effects.
Despite knowing it would make me ill, I feel for the promise of a sparkly snowflake scent diffuser (with a night light, no less) and its coordinating red bobble of toxic liquid ironically named “Cranberry wintertime.” I just wanted to have a nice house that smelled good. It was a weak moment. Sure, I knew that wintertime does not smell like cranberries and neither would my home, but I bought into the hope and paid the price.
Within an hour of installing the “Cranberry wintertime” diffuser in the bathroom socket, the smell pervaded every room in my house, resembling a stench that smelled more like “Sulphur in spring.” My eyes began to burn, my throat became scratchy, my nasal passages were on fire and my head pounded with the memory of nausea soon to follow.
Desperate for relief, I took the device out of the wall socket and tossed it on the shelf in the bathroom before barricading myself in a room with windows wide open. In my haste, the diffuser fell on its side. Liquid stink dripped steadily down the wall, seeping into the drywall, the wood frame, down to the tiled floor. For three days I couldn’t be on the main floor of our house. It lingers still.
Lesson learned. Life stinks, but trying to cover up what we perceive as being not good enough only masks our own insecurities. I’ll take a stinky dog, winter gear soggy from playing outside, the stench of hockey gear from my favourite hockey player and the Carpenter’s stinky coveralls over stupid cranberries in any season.
I’ll call it “Organized chaos” and breathe it in deeply. That’s my home. That’s my everything.