We have a linen closet that for a time in my childhood was emptied out and made to serve as the “Nintendo room”, containing an NES hooked up to an old Commodore 64 monitor. I still associate that fabric/crafty smell with 8-bit gaming.
I also love the smell of sun soaked dog fur.
My favorite smell is also my favorite word; Petrichor. It’s the smell of the earth when it rains after an extended dry period.
From Wikipedia “from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) ‘rock’; or πέτρος (pétros) ‘stone’ and ἰχώρ (ikhṓr) ‘ichor’, the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods in Greek mythology.”
I like that smell, or that smell that comes right before a rain where you can smell its coming or lilacs when they first start to bud and its not too heavy yet
Man one of my most fivid memories is me sitting in the window of my crappy room, smelling the petrichor and smoking a cig while it’s raining. I’m no longer a smoker but thinking back it really hit different
Asphalt, kinmokusei (a tree that blooms in autumt in Japan, don’t know it in English), the natural body odor of a certain fling I had eight years ago whom I now hate because they didn’t want to leave their partner for me and because they made me experience transfuckingcendant sex and now my standards are way too high to enjoy anything else, freshly ground coffee, igusa (the weed of which tatami are made).
kinmokusei (a tree that blooms in autumt in Japan, don’t know it in English)
“Fragrant Olive”, apparently
Edit: or also “Sweet Osmanthus” according to Wikipedia
🎶 🎵 one of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not quite the same 🎵 🎶
Mine is a composite smell of my grandfather’s shed: soil, and sawdust, and wood glue, and petrol, and pipe smoke, and whisky. He was a keen gardener and would often spend the afternoon pottering around the garden, tending to his veggies or flowerbeds or mowing the lawn, then wind up for an hour or so in the shed, sitting on a deck chair and smoking his pipe (or occasionally a cigar) and drinking single malt whisky. Sometimes he’d be reading the paper, sometimes looking through the notebooks he filled with plans and notes about the garden, sometimes just looking out across the garden and being content. I never got into gardening, but I did love to find him at the end of a day at school and just hang out with him in the shed. Often we wouldn’t talk, he’d read the paper and I’d read The Beano. I learned companionable silence from him.
Sometimes I’ll catch one of those smells and it takes me right back, over 50 years ago, to that shed and makes me feel safe and warm and happy.
Almond-scented stuff (not almonds themselves - they have no noticeable smell to me).
Pine forests, the sort with lots of dry pine needles on the ground.
I’ve never been in a pine forest, everything around me is decidedly deciduous. I’m gonna have to find the nearest pine forest and go smell it.
Tomato plants. Pet fur. Orange blossom. Generic institution bathroom cleaner. Seaweed. My partner’s clean breath
Taking a hit out of my cats fur after a long stressful day is the best relaxation technique I’ve found
Crisp “smell” after first frost.
Oceanic pine forest on hot days
Onion and garlic when heated in oil making food.
I can’t really describe it, but sometimes after sneezing I get this very pleasant smell in my nose for like 2 seconds. It’s what I would imagine the world’s most expensive bedsheets to smell like. It doesn’t happen with every sneeze, but the smell is consistent and has been for many years. Unfortunately it only lasts for like 2 good whiffs.
I always thought that smells when sneezing were caused by a sinus infection.
no clue what causes this smell but it’s 100% not a sinus infection
Campfire
A single scent: it’s a tossup between mesquite or coffee.
A combination of scents hitting your nose like an olfactory blitzkrieg: that first step into an Indian restaurant when you get hit by a combination of different curries, naan bread, and the rest of their menu that they’ve been serving to customers over the last several hours.
My dog smells absolutely fantastic. I could just sniff her all day.
I’ve never met another dog that smelled nice to me.
Water. Whether it’s ocean water, creek water, water on trees in the woods, spring rain, summer rain, fall rain (they all have different scents), or the smell of rain from miles away mixed with ozone from summer storms, even lightly chlorinated pool water can smell good in the right circumstances.
That and my cats fur. He always either smells like clean laundry, even if he’s been nowhere near any laundry, or if it’s a windy day and he’s been sitting at the window he smells like fresh air.
I don’t know whether anyone else smells this, because I never hear people talk about it.
Some time in November, no matter the weather, there will be this empty, metallic, crisp, clean burning smell. I usually only catch whiffs of it a few times. It’s how I gauge when winter is here.
Maybe this is just how winter smells and I get noseblind to it quickly?
It could be someone near you doing a controlled burn of their fields. IDK why farmers do it but I know it’s a thing. I can sometimes smell it where I am though I am not a huge fan of whatever it is we burn around here.
Yeah. I know that one. That’s a good one. The burning I’m thinking of is burning leaves.
Smoking meat.
Mountain air is pretty great.
Also a big fan of the smell of allspice. I remember as a child climbing on the kitchen counter to reach the spice cabinet so I could crack that jar and get a good whiff.
Oh no, you can’t do that. Sorry to tell you, but for years you smelled up all the scent of your family’s supply of allspice and ruined Thanksgiving (or weridass Canadian Thanksgiving), or Christmas, or whatever
Grapefruit (I always thought the name should be Greatfruit whos with me amirite?)
