HouseScents for the Housebound and some WINNAHS!

Oh, damb.  It’s already starting and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!  COLD AF, babydolls.  30F is the high – with a definite gale-force wind.   The sky is greyish-white, with a weak-assed alreadyWinter sun trying to poke through the cloud cover.  It ain’t happening, Weak Winter Sun, you wuss.  The ground is covered in grey, crunchy leaves.  And my world is so…quiet.   I took The Girl for a quick walk but mah laig is still a bit wonky  and the cold really HURTS! (it’s actually mah hip, which is caused by Other Issues but I digress and, really, does it matter? Hurt is Hurt.)  Nobody is out.  No.bo.dy.  And it feels as if the world is gearing up to stab me in the heart with an iron-cold finger.

So.  I stay in a lot.  And look around – and don’t like what I see.  Because SAD is already starting to kick in.  But I noticed that if I scent my space I hate it a whole lot less.   Unlike the warmer weather, where the only thing I am concerned about it making sure the toilet is flushed ( I haz GUYS in my house) being housebound requires a whole different level of olfactory involvement.  First:  clean.  I live with a big farting man and a big, farting dog.  Airing out the house is required.  I don’t care if it’s -14F out there, a quick 30-second sweep of an open door (and a fan blowing air IN) works wonders.  I also wash The Girl’s bed every 2-3 days.   If you want to know how your dog’s bed really smells, leave your house for 24 hrs.   Anosmia is sneaky, which I found out when I walked into our bedroom yesterday and was immediately reminded of that stale smell that inhabits most resale/thrift stores (and you just KNOW there is an entire Google page devoted to that, don’t you?)  I’m okay with it in Salvation Army but I’ll be damned if it’s going to permeate my bedroom – so everyday (Every. Day) in colder weather I take a few minutes to strip the bed and air out the mattress topper and that foam mattress pad.  Missy March reminded me that the foam pad holds heat like an oven, which probably also means it holds body smells as well – so, fan on high, a quick shaking of each layer of our Princess and the Pea layered bed (hey, not MY idea – I’d sleep on a tatami if I could) and a drop of lavender or eucalyptus EO in the palm of my hand as I remake everything – and booya!  Smell gone.  Thank Floyd!  I cannot even imagine what it would be like to encounter that smell every time I walked into the bedroom.

Vinegar.  An OCD’s Best Friend. I wipe down the kitchen with white vinegar to get rid of cooking smells and that layer of grease that happens no matter what you are cooking (boil an egg?  grease.  cut up a tomato?  grease.  Kitchens LOVE grease).

Once all that is done, then…All About the Pretty.

Diffusers

I have an Aera, which I reviewed awhile back –  it’s a quiet, hi-tech home scenting unit, sleek as a seal, and they now have a whole bunch of intriguing new scents.  It’s also Alexa-integrated now, which for me is like inviting Skynet to dinner – but ymmv.  I’m happy to do it manually, since I’m hoping to stave off the robot overlords for as long as possible.  I have it on the lowest setting and it just gently scents the air without making me itch.

I still use my reed and flower diffusers (and the tassels, too!) from Agraria  Loved by me for 40 years, Bitter Orange is – and always will be – my friend.

some more on the lo-tech front, I use melts.  Camille Lee at Prairie Aromatics  has an amazing line of melts, from Almond to White Sage  (I was hoping to go A-Z but zinnias don’t have a smell so I guess she had to stop at W.  When she does a Yuzu?  All over it over here).  She’s a perfumista’s dream for candles and melts – recently I asked her to do a series of body products for a Certain Someone who has been hunting for non-melon’d cucumber and Camille GOT IT!  Her cucumber is garden-fresh as opposed to dabbed with eau du frog, often the unfortunate result of the addition of calone.  She did a Whipped Dream Cream (which I use on my face, it’s that fresh and full of non-comodogenic stuff) – and in cucumber, it has that lovely scent memory of cold cream.   I’ll be hollerin’ about that in a later post because Winter is COLD CREAM time!  But!  Back to house stuff – her melts are astonishingly non-perfumey, if that makes any sense?  They have great scent – but they don’t have that chemical afterburn that so many melts have.  At $6 a pack (for 6 melts) you can lose your damb mind and get a whole bunch of different scents.  I dig  my usual suspects like Eucalyptus Spearmint  and Peppermint (hey, I am nothing if not predictable) – but …I dunno…lately I’ve been ogling Olive Blossom – and what do you think Silk Sheets will smell like?  I actually have a set of woven silk sheets and they smell different from cotton or linen but I can’t quite describe the smell – kinda …warm?  And, maybe….her Japanese Plum?

Sprays (even lower-tech!)

This one is kinda Blame March – waaaay back, she sprayed a bit of Annick Goutal Noel room spray (we were standing in her closet – don’t ask) and it was PERSACKLY as she described it ‘ walking into a florist’s chiller at Christmastime’.  Simply gorgeous.  Now.  I would’ve happily gone and gotten one of the damb sprays – but I would have an easier time of it lassoing a rampaging velociraptor and forcing it to sit down and have afternoon tea with me.  I was bereft (about the spray, not the velociraptor)  – then, in Straub’s Grocery in St. Louis I stumbled upon Trapp Candles.  Sniffed Bob’s Flower Shoppe.  Fell. In. Love.  The candles are fabbo, too.  Best of all?  They’re made in Kansas City, right in the middle of the USA!  Squee that!

EOs

Sometimes, all you want is to boil some water and put a couple drops of EO in to clear the space.  Okay, LOTS of times.  In winter, I take this OldAF pan that I’ve used just for this action (omg.  this pan is prolly 50years old and cast steel – I don’t think they even make those anymore!) – I boil some water, then I turn off the stove (an essential part of the process, so you don’t set your house on fire) and put 2-3 drops of EO therein.  My favorite line is Florihana, which I first found at Beautyhabit.  Florihana takes distillation seriously  (check out their ‘laboratory’ and ‘know-how’ pages, if you’re interested) .

Well!  Writing all that cheered me right the heck up!  I’m almost giddy as I type the winners from the last Musings:

Kathryn

Vanie

Sharon

(gmail me evilauntieanita and remind me which post and I’ll get some goodies out.

I’ll do another giveaway down the line – right now I have to get back to work but when I’m done I’ll scent the house!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!  Stay warm!