The Scent of Home

My home, that is.

I like my flat. It is neither particularly big nor special, but it is mine, and it has everything I need (apart from, maybe, a balcony, which is something I am thinking about adding if I'll ever come into money - how exactly that is going to happen is still a mystery, but life has a tendency to sometimes happen in rather wondrous and unexpected twists and turns, doesn't it?).

Saturday mornings I usually do the cleaning; once a week done properly is enough for a place with no kids and no other inhabitants than one woman and one cat.

It will not have escaped your notice that today is indeed Saturday, and therefore, I was going about my usual tasks of dusting and hoovering, mopping and wiping, when I thought of writing about how scents are usually quite characteristical of any building, be it a school or a shop, a hotel or hospital, restaurant or residence.

My olfactorial sense is certainly no different to that of the majority of people, with whole industries making a living by tapping into it, and by no means only the perfume manufacturers. Scents are deliberately added to the airconditioning of office buildings to increase work performance, in hotels to make guests feel relaxed and welcome, and I dare say we all have walked past a bakery where the air vent was placed on purpose to make the scent of freshly baked bread and rolls waft through the pedestrian area and up the nostrils of those walking by.

Let's go back to my place and find out what it smells of right now.

Some of my furniture belonged to my grandparents; they bought them in the 1930s when they got married. The wood is mostly in very good condition, although some of the surfaces have suffered water damage during the years my grandmother had put the sideboard in the spare room and kept potted plants on it in winter.

I like the colour and the style of those pieces, and every other Saturday or so I use a bit of beeswax polish on them. The smell of that is very warm and mixes with the scent of the rose petal potpourri I made myself; from time to time, I freshen it up with a few droplets of rose oil.

My coffee table with the glass top was also my grandparents'; they bought it in the 1960s, which is quite obvious from its clear-lined shape and square chrome feet. The glass cleanser I use has a lemony smell, like probably most such detergents, and adds to the overall mixture of scents in my flat, since there is glass in the form of table tops or mirrors in every room except for the kitchen.

The bathroom usually smells most prominently of the bar of soap I am using at the time; currently, it is lily of the valley (not my favourite scent but it is nice enough).

In the kitchen, scents vary with the time of day as they will in most homes.

Today at lunch time, I had this substantial stew made by my mum. It smelled and tasted as good as it looked (if you, like me, love soups and stews).

Half an hour later, that was replaced by the scent of coffee.

What does your home smell of?