Olfactory Memories

I know this is weird, but I seriously like the smell of certain cleaning products. Obviously there isn't anything inherently pleasing about the aroma of windex . . . to most people it smells awful. But to me, it smells like going to the furniture store to clean 3 times a week with my family. I didn't particularly enjoy cleaning the furniture store, but 20 years later it really is synonymous with the comforts of childhood. Same thing with pledge. As for comet cleanser, it transports me immediately to the basement of the Decatur house, and reminds me of Saturday mornings waiting for Amy to clean the bathroom and finish whatever Sunfire novel she was reading so that she would play with me. I don't associate the smell of lemon lysol with childhood, but I like it because it reminds me of my nesting instinct that kicked into overdrive in the last stages of my pregnancy. In fact, overdrive might be an understatement. I went a little nuts :)! I "lysoled" every surface in my apartment . . . walls, doors, cabinets, etc. It was pretty intense. Craig and our friends thought it was hillarious. So the smell of it remonds me of the excitement of those days. The brain is truly an amazing organ, because I don't assosiate it with the bad sleep or aches or ridiculous swelling that happened at the same time :). Now anyone who knows me knows that organizational skills and the like have never been my strong suit. I've always been a bit of a germ-a-phobe, so I have done a pretty good job of keeping kitchen surfaces sanitary, but keeping things tidy is quite another story. Well, I'm still not great at it, but I am getting a lot better, and more efficient. And it has become important to me. When I was a student or a working girl, I wasn't thrilled about the nasty ring in my toilet bowl that had been there since I moved in, but it didn't matter enough to me to determine to get rid of it. Or the stains in my sink and bathtub. When I got back from my Christmas travels, it was a pretty scary time because I had just started meds for my post-partum depression, which got really intense really fast. I was feeling pretty successful if I was able to get myself and baby dressed, and do the dishes in a day. Eventually when I felt up to it, I made myself a list of chores so that I knew that everything would get done in the course of a week - from grocery shopping to mopping the floors. Every task was assigned to a day, and it has helped me a ton. Also, the paradigm shift that occured when I changed careers into a full-time homemaker made me care a lot more about those things that I was able to close my eyes to before. In my past life, I had tangible things to look at at the end of the day to help me feel productive . . . pages of music learned, tests taken, papers written, hours spent at work. But as a homemaker, what I have to show for my efforts at the end of the day are the atmosphere in my home and the health and happiness of my husband and daughter. With a little ingenuity and lot of elbow grease, I conquered the stains in my sink, toilet, and tub; I also feel like I conquered my need for feeling productive by allowing myself to take pride in the atmosphere in my home and give myself high-fives for every chore that I got done in a day.