When you love to garden and routinely have your hands in the soil, grime and God knows what else, you tend to think a lot about getting clean – at least I do. Lately I have been thinking more about the idea of clean and what it means. Of particular interest is the concept of what clean smells like.
Companies across the globe spend billions of dollars to convince us that our hair should smell like mango, our body soap like cucumbers & melons and our clothes like “clean linen”. Their job is to sell us on what clean smells like and they have been overwhelmingly successful at it for decades.
It wasn’t until I made my own laundry detergent that I came to a new understanding about clean. It took a little time for us to adjust to the fact that our laundry doesn’t smell like anything anymore. That’s because clean doesn’t have a smell. It doesn’t smell like roses or bleach or Febreze®, it doesn’t smell at all. In fact, as soon as you introduce a perfume oil or alcohol carrier into the mix whatever you’re applying it to ceases to be clean.
With the antibacterial onslaught of the past few years and the hysteria that surrounds our incessant need to be germ-free, sometimes you have to step back and wonder if there is such a thing as being too clean. Being germ-free isn’t a good thing if you want the truth, even for kids. In fact, kids that are exposed to fewer germs growing up are more likely to be susceptible to every viral outbreak that shows up.
Do we really need to smell some company chemist’s idea of clean or can we break the habit and get back to a real understanding of what the word really means?
HOMEMADE WINDOW CLEANER: You don’t need ammonia to clean windows! Fill a clean spray bottle with water. Add 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar and 2 drops of dish detergent.
Why does our window cleaner need to be blue when a simple homemade concoction will do the same streak-free job? If you don’t believe me, give it a try. It won’t cost you a thing and you might find that you can make your own household cleaners at home after all. It doesn’t need a brand name or some toxic chemical to work.
What does “clean” smell like to you?
