I got my hair cut earlier today, and while I was there, I mentioned that I could smell pumpkin. She replied, “Yeah, I have a Scentsy at home” and not only did the smell linger on her, I can STILL smell it at home. :mad:
I set my purse on the counter, where she also had some of her tools, and it seems to be emanating from there. I mean, I like the smell of pumpkin, but not this way.
:rolleyes:
What’s a Scentsy?
They’re sold through home parties and dealers, like Avon or Tupperware.
Better than a Fartsy.
Huh. I have one, it’s never been that strong. But fuck pumpkin-scented anything on principle.
Gads. I made my semi-annual trip to the mall on Monday. Two hours later, my eyes and sinuses were swollen shut,even though I didn’t set foot in a department store nor Bath & Body Works. Just the existence of those perfume counters and smelly stores under one big roof was enough to make me itch for two days, and I ate Excedrin like they were TicTacs to avoid a migraine while I spent two days shepherding a pair of teen girls around Savannah for a nice little getaway. (Yes, Benadryl would have been effective, but it’s hard to chaperone while semi-comatose, which is what antihistamines do for me.) Please, keep your Scentsy, your Rainbow Unicorn Fart hand sanitizer, and your Eau de Too Much Money at home! I’d honestly rather smell BO.
Eh. I have three different pumpkin-y themed scents between Glade and AirWick right now. Love two of them and the third’s just alright. But if they permeated my clothes and belongings and made the scent travel anywhere besides inside the house I’d have to throw it all out. That’s weird and who wants that smell actually on them?
I think the stylist may have benefited from the OP pointing out it’s too strong if people can smell it when she’s not home. I mean, yes she said she has it at home when her client mentioned it, but a lot of people have trouble with 2+2, you know?
Sounds like you passed a Yankee Candle store. I went into one once, because someone was requesting an item for a gift, and I smelled like that store the rest of the day even though all I handled was what I purchased.
Several years ago, I went to a craft show and one of the vendors, who sold homemade hand cream, smeared some on me without asking me first. I nearly punched her. :mad: It was very strong smelling, too, and I couldn’t get rid of the odor.
The last time I offered to slap a total stranger (okay, the only time,) was when an overly enthusiastic sweet young thing in black tried to spray me with perfume when I had the temerity to walk into Macy’s. I ducked and flinched. She tried to tell me how wonderful Designer Parfum du Jour was. I told her that I would win the lawsuit if she sprayed me, and that I would seek an assault charge. She aimed that bleeping atomizer at me again, and the security guard arrived just as I raised my hand to defend myself - as I explained to the large man, I was just aiming for the damned perfume bottle. I don’t especially love migraines. He escorted her off the property, and I got an apology from Macy’s corporate office.
I still don’t shop there, 7 years later. Left a bad taste in my mouth. What genius thought it was a good idea to let folks just spray unsuspecting shoppers? !
I thought it was in the 90’s that the spray-assault was abandoned for handing out the little papers.
But I noticed some spray-types the last time I wandered through Macy’s (I make the mistake occasionally when I try to head into Water Tower, I tend to go through the first set of doors I come across and they’re often the Macy’s doors - that open right into the cosmetics department and the little Lush corner). It seems odd they would go back to assaulting people with the spray, since I don’t know about you, but I feel there are tons more people sensitive to scents than there were in the 90’s. I would think people would be even less tolerant about it now than when the original pushback happened (as I remember) back then. Maybe they figure if you can even manage to walk through the department you must be OK to have stuff on you the rest of the day.
I heard about the perfume-sprayers but never personally encountered one. They stopped doing them in large part because of assaults, and people avoiding their stores because they didn’t want to be accosted by one, especially without their consent.
The pumpkin smell is FINALLY starting to fade out. It’s almost like I stepped in something, KWIM? But unlike something I stepped in, I can’t see it either.
The aforementioned Glade and AirWick aren’t as powerful as things like Scentsy or other scented candles and waxes. I will say that I did some relief work at a critical access hospital that had the pharmacy at the end of the med/surg hallway, and they admitted a man who had been huffing Glade. You could smell him through the whole building. :o
As long as we’re on the topic of overly aggressive scents, how about Crabtree & Evelyn? I can barely stand to walk by their outlets without puking.
Lacunae Matata, have you ever tried fexofenadine (brand name Allegra)? I don’t know if it would be effective for your allrrgy symptoms, but if so, I can vouch for it not putting me to sleep.
Even the generic tends to be spendier than Benadryl, is the only disadvantage I’ve encountered, but for me, it’s worth the price of a bottle at Costco.
We spent the last couple of days with my aunt. She’s all-natural-everything, refuses to take any medication (it’s unnatural) unless it’s herbal (because herbal is natural and natural is good for you, including hemlock and belladona), tried to rant at me about chemistry being unnatural (not the first time)…
I guess the five different heavily-scented soaps, creams and so forth she used while in the bathroom are all-natural. I can certify that the combination smelled like an industrial accident in a Bed, Bath and Beyond warehouse, bleagh! I do my best to get unscented, that cloud of competing adipates was enough to make me want to run away screaming :(.
I would take a guess she’s using stuff from Lush. The crunchy people I know love their stuff and it’s fairly smelly, but “natural” is a rather fluid term. Their ingredients lists include “safe synthetics” whatever that means. But - I believe the actual scents are plant derived and so may give some sensitivities relief unless those sensitivities are to plant extracts.
My mom has issues with cheap perfumes and scents (like some god-awful powdery smell stuff my aunt gets from Walgreens or somewhere). At best she gets an itchy/sneezy nose and at worst she gets an asthma attack. Don’t know what ingredient really gives her the problem, but I don’t think it’s the plant extract/essential oil found in better scents. She mentioned once that she noticed I wear light scents when she hugs me (shampoo, soap and occasional eau de parfum) but she doesn’t have issues with mine. I think it’s because she’s not getting a snootful of whatever cheap carrier or whatever else is used in the drugstore stuff. I dunno. Just a WAG based on decades of Mom being sensitive to scents and some making my own nose itchy.
OK, if that is that heated-wax-candle-without-the-wick-or-flame thing, then… a-ha! I’m with you. My boss has one of those in his little office within our little office. His smells, to me, like carmel corn. He’ll light it, or turn it on or what have you, and then leave the office to attend a meeting somewhere else. This is when we make sure that his office door is closed, and he can gas himself out when he returns.
My Scentsy experience: a lady at work brought in a tote bag full of samples, and left it in the break room. I never actually smelled much of anything because most of the samples were gone in a matter of minutes. She had to send out a tersely worded email later that day stating that the samples were only for sniffing, and not for actual use. I haven’t seen the sample bag since then…guess she didn’t drum up many sales.
I have seen Yankee Candle store managers spraying down parts of the store, and even the space out in the mall in front of the store, with cans of their room spray.
I’ve never witnessed it, but I’m pretty sure most of these places employ Yankee Candle’s technique of hosing the place down with some room scent – the outlets I’ve visited don’t have nearly enough rose-scented stuff to account for the wall of rose scent you have to walk through to get inside.
Circa 1990, we bought a house from a woman who *lurved *potpourri. OK, maybe it was just because her husband smoked cigars in the house, but in any event, we couldn’t rid the house of the smell till we replaced all of the carpets and draperies, and repainted all the walls, and installed new kitchen cabinets.
My own mother has plug-in “air fresheners” and things in her toilet paper rolls that add all sorts of unnatural scents to her house. I have a big bottle of liquid laundry detergent that I’ll never use because of its “Mountain Fresh” scent - gag! My own daughter will come out of the bathroom smelling like a pseudo-fruit salad, between her shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotions. And let’s not get into the gawd-awful, anti-bacterial stinky soaps in most public restrooms…
I spend my life in search of unscented products or those with perfumes that fade in very short order. A pox upon those who demand overly-scented stuff!!
“Mountain Fresh” might be the worst, though the current pseudo-citrus is a close second.
Does anyone have a polite way to say, “Get the hell away from me until the stench of your soap, shampoo, moisturizer, and / or laundry soap and fabric softener dissipate so I can breathe?” Because there are people at work that I genuinely like, but dread the sight of, because of the miasma of scents they carry around, like Charlie Brown’s Pig Pen.
This is one reason why I make my own laundry detergent. 1 cup 20 Mule Team borax, 1 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda (NOT baking soda) and a grated bar of Fels Naphtha Soap. Use 1 teaspoonful for a lightly soiled load or 1 tablespoonful for a heavily soiled load. Dirt cheap, leaves no residue, and lasts quite a long time too (for me, anyway).
I have a pot of bean soup cooking in my crockpot, and when the onion smell emerged, I got out my own version of a room deodorizer: vinegar in an open container. Works great!