After yet another typical day in quarantine, when I alternated between answering emails, snacking, and watching Hulu, I woke up from a nap and smelled something...unsavory. I surveyed my armpits, but those were fine. I tried sniffing my shirt and even my shorts, but those were freshly cleaned, too. I even removed a sock and cautiously took a whiff—it was unpleasant, but not the culprit, either. Finally, I stood up, and then I quickly realized where the odor originated. I lifted the couch cushion, pressed it to my nose, and wham. Bingo.
If you’re a responsible adult, you’ve most likely been spending a lot of time in your home lately. Unfortunately, at least partially due to many irresponsible adults, that’s not about to change anytime soon. All this lounging around means that the surfaces of our home—our beds, our couches, our armchairs—are likely getting a lot more use than they were before. And then, of course, there are the other atypical things happening inside: working out, eating three meals per day, perhaps even not showering as much as we used to.
All of this leads to an accelerated wear and tear of the stuff in our homes, which includes our stinking up the place. And the worst part is, thanks to a phenomenon called “nose fatigue,” we may not even notice it right away. Day in and day out, we could all be just marinating in our own smells—kinda like I was doing on my poor couch.
The fragrance expert Frédéric Malle explains the phenomenon this way: “Think of yourself driving in a tunnel. As you enter the tunnel, the lights inside shift your perception of color. In Europe, we have orange and green lights in our tunnels, so everything appears orange and green. After a few minutes, you start seeing colors again, and the orange becomes not so dominant. Perfumes are exactly the same—humans adapt to foreign elements so that we neutralize them. Therefore, one doesn’t smell his or her perfume, nor his own smell, nor the awful smell of staying inside for too long.”
The issue with home smells, says Gwen Whiting, cofounder of luxury laundry brand The Laundress, has to do with all the fabrics everywhere. “Certain fabrics, like synthetics, tend to trap odor more than naturals,” she explains. “Synthetic fibers don’t absorb moisture. They do, however, absorb the oils from our skin and our sweat, which then sit on top of the fibers and cause odor.” It's essentially a never-ending battle to keep things fresh. “Smells like kitchen vapors get into fabric, leather, and even paint and the carpet,” she says. Everything in the apartment works like a sponge.”
You’re probably thinking the solution is simple: Grab some Lysol and Febreze and call it a day. That’s cool and all—if you want your house to smell like a Hallmark store. There are better ways to neutralize the odors in your home and then scent it to make for a more pleasurable, non-invasive aromatic experience. Here, a few tips from the pros.
Air It Out
“Whenever possible, circulate fresh air by opening your windows,” says Whiting. Allowing for the breeze to waft through will make sure the stale or stagnant air gets a nice refresh.
For those of us enduring unbearable heat this summer, though, there’s an easy enough alternative: an air purifier. Products like the Dyson Pure Cool and the BlueAir Pure Fan clean as they cool, removing things like dust and pollen particles from your home environment.
Whiting also recommends a slightly more DIY kind of trick: Put a ¼ cup or so of vinegar into a bowl, then place in rooms or areas that need freshening up for a minimum of 15 minutes. “It quickly absorbs unsavory scents, and also works great for whisking away smells from the fridge, microwave, or trash can,” she says. The Laundress makes a Scented Vinegar that has just a hint of perfume, so it’s barely noticeable when you keep it out and about in rooms throughout your home.
Keep Your Fabrics Fresh
If you prefer to keep sprays, candles, and other scented elements to a minimum, your best bet is to neutralize odors that are built up on your sofas, carpets, and other upholstery by running over them with a steamer. “Steamers can kill a tremendous amount of mites and odor-causing bacteria from curtains, sofas, mattresses, and rugs. Just hover over the textiles for a few seconds,” Whiting says. (She recommends a Jiffy, but any old steamer should do the trick.)
After that, use a scented spray that is versatile enough to complement your home environment and not overwhelm the senses. Synthetic sprays, like those found in Febreze or other drugstore products, tend to mask odors by overwhelming them, which only exacerbate the issue. You don’t really want to “smell” clean so much as you want to “feel” it, right?
“A scent for the home has to be beautiful and comfortable,” Malle says. And it has different demands than other scents: Rather than simply making a candle or spray for each of his perfumes, Malle commissioned an entirely new range of scents for his line of home fragrances.
His latest product, the Perfume Gun, is a spray that can be used for “instant reward.” “You can spray any couch, curtain, or carpet at a distance and the perfume will stay,” he says. Grab one in the scent “Jurassic Flower,” a citrus-magnolia mist that smells beautifully clean. And by that, we don’t mean like Lysol. We mean like a freshly pressed, custom French shirt.
Light Up
While most room sprays dissipate over time, candles do the opposite. “They gradually invade the room with their smell,” Malle says. This can make for a more overpowering command of the air in a space, rather than a subtle scent.
Just like perfumes, candles come in a range of smells that can completely suit a person’s individual taste. There’s the smoky, woody genius of Portable Fireplace by DS & Durga, the fresh-from-the-barbershop clean of Luce di Colonia by Acqua di Parma, a bright fruity twist with Thé Osmanthus by Dior, or a crisp, cool floral with Malle’s own Rosa Rugosa.
Whatever you do, allow for one scented candle to reign supreme in a large room—there’s no need to “layer” by adding multiples. You’d be surprised at just how far the scent can carry once it’s burned for a few hours.
Upgrade Your Laundry
The very worst kind of nose fatigue often comes from the clothes we wear on our backs. If you’ve ever gone in for a hug and you could smell someone’s detergent (or that they left their load too long in the wash), then you know what I’m talking about.
Maybe the scent of our clothes feels like something apart from the home entirely, but it’s all connected. Whatever odors get trapped in our gym shirts or towels could very well end up on our sofas or our bed sheets, depending on how judicious you are about keeping your things tidy.
Surprisingly, the best way to get rid of these odors is to avoid dry cleaning altogether. “The process sets in bad smells,” Whiting says. She also adds that key best practices, like removing your wet clothes from the washing machine promptly, avoiding hanging things to air dry in humid or damp places (like your bathroom!), and steaming regularly will help keep smells at bay.
For peskier scents, like lingering bad smells on gym clothes, baseball caps, or old t-shirts, The Laundress basically made a “for guys” wash called Sport Detergent that does a heavy duty clean without damaging fabrics.
And if you want to get fanatical about it, I like ordering extras of my very favorite candles, unboxing them, and placing them throughout different parts of my closet. Sometimes the wax warms up and when I open the doors, it smells undeniably like my ideal scent. You can also grab a few of L’Occitane’s Lavender Perfumed Sachets and stick them in your drawers. Lavender is a neutral and gentle scent that will give a delicate perfume to your garments over time. plus, it keeps for a long time, so you don’t have to worry much about replacements—maybe even until we're on the other side of all this.
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July 20, 2020 at 07:06PM
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Home Scents: How to Make Your House Smell Great - GQ
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