House Smells

When I was a kid, I didn’t go to very many houses and of those, even fewer multiple times. Of the homes I was in regularly—my very close friends and my piano teacher—I could recognize the smell very easily. I assumed every house had it’s own specific odour. These smells were very light and faint, and completely neutral—neither pleasant nor unpleasant—but constant. They went beyond cooking spices or woodsmoke or perfume but could contain those notes if they were constant enough in the home. Mainly they were just a mishmash of unrecognizable elements that constituted the olfactory fingerprint of that place, as much as the address. I could recognize it always, and with my friends (not my piano teacher) sometimes catch it on their clothes or hair if we were very close to each other.

For years, until I moved out, I could not smell my own house—I was, like the Febreeze ads say, nose-blind to it for being there all the time. Once I no longer lived there, sometimes I could vaguely catch it, just as I walked in the door, before the nose-blindness caught up to me, but I had to surprise myself—mainly I was still immune. Once I asked a childhood friend about it and she knew instantly what it was—this is one of the many reasons why it is so important to stay in touch with old friends—though she struggled to articulate it. “Something spicy, heavy…” She shrugged, waving hands. That was fair—I could have identified the smell of her house in a crowd of 1000 people, easily, but I don’t think I could describe it.

When my mom finally sold the house and the smell became very rare, I finally became able to smell it—there’s a few items and areas in my mom’s current place that contain it, certain cupboards I stick my head in and sniff and remember. I think of it as dry, woody, papery. I don’t get the spicy notes, or no more than just a whisper. My brother suggested that the smell is old books, and maybe so, but I smell it in the kitchen cupboards the most, so I’m not sure.

I’ve been talking to a few friends about house smells and they have them or remember them too, but always with the older generation. People my own age, in the present tense, are in and out of each others’ homes much less than we were when I was a child, so I have fewer opportunities to pick up on house smells but as far as I can tell, they are less than they used to be. I think maybe it’s mobility—people moving around so much, don’t settle in long enough to develop a smell. Or all these multi-unit homes, without basements and attics and weird little porches to contribute odours. Or the use of air fresheners, essential oils, and the aforementioned Febreeze, imported scents to overrule whatever rises up organically in the home. Anyway, I know almost no homes today that have a smell I would recognize.

I always sort of hoped Mark and I would have home smell one of these days. It seemed like a real landmark of cozy domesticity. As renters of many years, I felt we never really got there, but when we bought a condo in 2023, I thought that maybe our signature scent days were at hand. Imagine my fury to realize the condo already HAD an odour. The previous owners are not my favourite people—I feel like they didn’t handle the sale very honestly, in addition to just being incredible dirty, but we scrubbed everything in the whole joint, ripped out the carpets, painted the walls, took out the disgusting valences and washed the curtains. Where does that smell LIVE? They took all the furniture and what else is there? It only surfaces on hot days, going dormant for a large part of the year, then popping back up.

Unlike every other house smell I ever knew, I don’t feel this one is neutral, probably because it’s not associated with anyone I like—I find it acrid and sharp. I also dislike room deodorizers but I have started spraying a lavender essential spray on the hottest days just to cover it up. This is very disappointing. Maybe we are never going to have a home smell of our own, and I will just have to settle for someday getting rid of this one, and getting to neutral.

Something I have realized recently, in an attempt to look on the bright side is that while our home doesn’t have our own smell, we do. I mean, Mark my husband has a particular smell, neither good nor bad, just himself, that I could instantaneously recognize in a crowd of 1000 people. I mentioned this to him and he said I have a smell too. This stands to reason—why wouldn’t I?—but it is disappointing because I can’t smell it and I guess I never will. I must always be noseblind to myself, since I cannot get a break from me. I will never really know what I smell like.

But Mark has a smell, and all these years when we haven’t been developing our house smell. he’s been the constant. A person can be home.