contest! win a year of barely native organic soaps
Our new contest is compliments of our friends at Barely Native, purveyors of soap products made with organic herbs and essential oils to leave skin feeling clean and moisturized. Barely Native is generously offering one lucky reader an entire YEAR of their non-toxic, cruelty-free soaps with a free membership in the Soap of the Month Club — a $100 value. We kind of wish we could enter this one!
Here’s how to enter for your chance to win: Tell us what scent evokes a pleasant memory for you, and tell us about that memory, in a comment on this post. Leave your comment between now and Tuesday, May 12, 5 p.m. EST. When comments close, the Shelterrific team will read them all and choose the one we think is the winner. That’s right — no random number generator this time. Instead, we’ll be selecting a winner based on our favorite comment! So think before you post! Be sure to leave a working email address. We can’t wait to read your comments!
Thanks so much to Brian and his team at Barely Native for making this giveaway possible.
P.S. We’ll announce the winners of the previous Small Garden Contest next week.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:19 am
I love the smell of lemon, it reminds me of clean kitchens and lemon meringue pie — some of my favorite childhood memories.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:25 am
What an awesome giveaway! I’ve actually been thinking about this topic a lot recently — for me, scent can evoke memories that I didn’t even know I had!
Anyway, lately I’ve been waking up a bit earlier and giving myself time to sit in my chair and have a little coffee before beginning my day. It’s the time of year that reminds of me staying at my grandparents’ house when I was a child — cool, crisp mornings with the faint smell of fresh-cut grass, when everything is still a little slow and only beginning to stir. Things just feel so clean, somehow, and when I meet my day this way, I feel like there are just so many opportunities ahead.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:37 am
I love the smell of pine tar soap. My grandfather used to use it. My grandmother always pooh-poohed it, and hated how it left a brown scum on the soapdish, but I always secretly liked the salty smell. I’ve found it again within the last couple of years, and have started using it.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Honeysuckle!!! It reminds me of being a kid in the summer. In my neighborhood there were tons of honeysuckle bushes and we used to suck the juice from them when we were outside playing. That smell is heavenly!!! Great giveaway and question.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:11 am
It’s Lily of the Valley for me! My mother passed away just recently, so I’ve found myself evoking childhood memories as a way to get through it. We had a patch of Lilies of the Valley hidden in a “secret spot” way back in our yard that my Mom and I used to go to to inhale the scent and pick the tiny stems and bring in the house. I grew up in Michigan, and you always knew spring was finally sprung when the lilies of the valley opened up. I can smell them now, and envision my Mom and I holding hands, bringing those tiny blossoms to our noses!
May 8th, 2009 at 7:12 am
The smell of approaching rain coming in on the breeze of an open window on a lazy afternoon. Curtains wave in the breeze to welcome the rain. I remember sitting with my grandfather on the porch watching the rain fall on the otherwise still street newly still. Fresh, still, safe, warm and clean is the smell of rain.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Mrs Meyers Geranium soap – This was the soap we used when our daughter was an infant. The mildest whiff of it brings me back to those early days. I admit I keep a bottle in my bathroom, and sometimes I’ll secretly go use it just to remember.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Oatmeal is very soothing to me. I had chicken pox twice growing up and what I remember most about the experience was sitting in oatmeal baths. I felt so taken care of and my itching was relieved. When I find oatmeal soaps, I pick them up.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Garlic and cigars! I know it sounds strange, but my grandmother’s house has had that smell since I was a child. Grandpa is gone now, but to this day, the hint of his cigars mix with the scent of the garlic my grandmother eats EVERY DAY and has for over 40 years (she is 96 this year).
May 8th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I love the smell of lilacs. When we used to live on my high school’s campus (private school and mom’s a teacher) we had 3-4 lilac bushes all around our house. the smell was amazing. i wish i had a bush in my yard, i try to sneak a few branches from my neighbors once in a while. I know its bad, but they cant use all of those wonderful flowers. plus its good to share. That smell always reminds me of wonderful spring days and eventhough i still had to walk to school it was lovely.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I love the smell of White Diamonds perfume- the one that my mother has worn for years. Happy Mother’s Day mom! -e
May 8th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Charlie perfume. Just a whip of it takes me back to first love. I wore it in high school when I dated Mark. Still today, 26 years later, when I catch a whiff, it reminds me of the first blush of love…
PS: I haven’t worn it since. It was special to him and to that period of my life.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Murphy’s Oil Soap. It is all over my memory, since it’s got so many uses! My mother used it to mop the floors when I was growing up. And I used it to clean the harness and saddlery for my horses as a kid. I was just scrubbing the cabinets and floors in my new apartment with it and it was like a daydream while I was cleaning!
May 8th, 2009 at 8:16 am
The scent of leather! I used to work with horses quite a bit and it was always pleasant to walk into the tack room and get a whiff of all of the equipment! Now, when I smell leather, I always think horses!
May 8th, 2009 at 8:22 am
A whiff of lavender reminds me of traveling from Michigan to Oregon in our VW blue Bug every summer during my childhood to visit my grandparents and great-aunt and uncle. (The car actually smelled terribly of sour milk, exacerbated by a heater that wouldn’t turn off, but that’s another story…) My Aunt Sally had a wonderful terraced garden of herbs and roses and yes, lavender. Every summer she and I would pick fresh lavender from her garden to make beribboned wands for her clothes drawers. One wand always returned with me to Michigan where I sometimes slept with it under my pillow. No scent makes me quite so happy or fills me with a sense of comfort quite like lavender.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:41 am
I love the smell of sandalwood soap. It reminds me of musty old closets in my parents’ old house, where I would find all sorts of neat stuff that they forgot about. Most people think it smells like old ladies, but to me, it just smells like some forgotten time.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:44 am
My favorite scent is tomatoes on the vine. It reminds me of my childhood. I grew up in Southwest Detroit and although we must have been surrounded by violence all I can recall is love. My whole family lived in the same neighborhood and one of my very favorite things was to pick cucumbers and tomatoes with my Mamaw and Papaw. Mamaw always knew they were ready by smelling the vines. We would wash them in the garden and eat them, still warm from the sun, with salt and basil. Papaw has since passed away and everyone has moved to their own areas of Michigan to escape Detroit’s devastation. It hurts me to visit the city, to see what it’s turned into now, but I realize that the houses didn’t make it home. I moved to New York City about 4 months ago and have experienced more than a few pangs of homesickness but all I have to do is go to the market and hold my nose up to the fruit to feel close to home again.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:52 am
I wish I had pleasant memories, but I don’t.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Wisteria is one of the most evocative scents. Just the smell of it takes me back to childhood, riding down my long, windy, wooded street in the backseat of the car with the windows open or walking home from the bus stop. The neighborhood was full of wonders – large wooded lots, a creek behind our house, a small grove of bamboo. My brother and I could imagine we were Asian warriors (Samurai, usually) or intrepid adventurers fording a dangerous stream, or lost royalty in an enchanted wood. All it takes is the scent of wisteria to bring me back to that neighborhood, to think of spring.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am
My favorite smell is play-doh…I have wonderful childhood memories of Play-doh, mostly because my mother HATED Pay-doh and wouldn’t allow it in our house…Occasionally I would get my Play-doh fix in birthday party take-home bags and I STILL keep a jar of it around so that I can take a whiff and get the kid-like buzz…….
May 8th, 2009 at 10:31 am
The smell of Cache perfume always reminds me of being a child and giving my mom a hug before going off to school. She always smelled so good. The memories are wonderful. Recently, I purchased a bottle for her at a local drug store and she was so grateful. I told her what wonderful memories the scent evoked in my head and heart. She put some on right away and I gave her a big hug for old times sake. She’s been wearing it every day now since I bought her the bottle. I love it.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I love the smell of a laundry room.
It’s hereditary as my great-grandmother was the head laundress for the Beverly Hills Hotel. I dont know if she shared my love of the smell, but my mother remembers visiting her there and what it smelled like…steamy soap, clean with slight hint of bleach.
My own grandmother had a laundry room in her San Francisco house that would have made Martha Stewart cry. The room itself was bigger than my first apartment and always had wonderful sounds and smells…again that steamy clean smell.
As time went on in my family, our laundry rooms got smaller (mine’s not even a room but a portion of our garage), but the memories of the fresh, warm, even motherly, smell remains.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:58 am
The scent of good, clean, MUD. My mother stretching the hose long to water the gardens and the dogs kicking up the mud as they incessantly fetched their tennis balls every summer evening when we finally ventured into the evening yard after the Memphis sun began to subside.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Lilacs! The smell takes me back to being thirteen, full of life and optimism. Everything was possible and nothing was off limits. The world was just waiting for me to prove how great I could be. Every spring, I remember that invincible feeling and it inspires me to dream big again. Amazing how a simple smell can remind you how precious life really is.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:52 am
The smell of earthworms right after it rains. My dad used to take my brother and I fishing and we would hunt for our own earthworms early in the morning after an evening of rain.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Most definitely the smell of honeysuckle. I grew up in Arkansas and the field next to my house was full of honeysuckle bushes and on the hottest of spring and summer days, that smell would find it’s way to my nose, as I was chilling in the kiddie pool. Not to mention, running around the field, picking some of the flowers and tasting the nectar inside.
Every once in a while, I’ll be walking around where I live now, in California, and there will be a honeysuckle plant that immediately brings back those memories.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
i like the scent of patchouli. it reminds me of so many things! first, my mother, who has worn it since i can remember and still wears it to this day. then, as a teenager, i went through a hippie phase, so i started wearing it too. and every once in a while, when i can still find a good bottle of patchouli oil, i will wear it in the summertime. i just love the woodsy and musky smell of it. it’s both masculine and feminine. and it makes me feel free of stress and lifts my spirits.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Bath and Body works Coconut Lime Verbena lotion. It was the moisturizer that I wore the first summer my now fiance and I were dating four years ago, and just a wiff brings back the strongest memories of my summer romance!
May 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
i worked as a cheesemaker for a few years, and there’s a particular smell of (non-pasteurized) milk as it slowly warms and curdles. the milk is sweet and grassy and the enzymes make it a little sour also – i find it very relaxing.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I love mint. Fresh, clean, simple. Mmm..
May 8th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Damp Concrete, Motor Oil and Dryer Sheets (at the same time)
My grandfather taught metal shop for 50 years at the local high school. When not at work he could be found in his basement shop making all sorts of neat things. My grandmother would be by his side ironing the weeks laundry down to every last sock.
That basement is where the family gathered for holiday events. The ping pong table covered in a vintage tablecloth and all of Grandpas tools surrounded us as we ate.
There were double doors that led to the backyard and all the grandkids would run outside to play when they were done, but each time we ducked our heads back in to steal a cookie or drink we were greeted by the warm smell of laundry and the crisp cold smell of concrete and motor oil.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
My favorite smell is fresh dill. If I’m in the grocery store and I walk past the display of dill (I say display – it’s usually in a big bucket!), I have to go back and take a deep whiff. When my sisters and I were young, my parents didn’t have a ton of money. So every summer, we would all go out and pick fruits and veggies so my mom could can and freeze them. My favorite one to help with was the pickles. Mom would wash the cucumbers in the washing machine (true story – it’s fast and gentle, and really gets them clean!), and then she would have us pack them into jars. The kitchen smelled of fresh dill and vinegar for days, and dill always reminds me of my mom, and the wonderful summers I had as a child. My mom has passed away, but I’m so glad of all the wonderful memories she helped us make.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Citrus, especially grapefruit. My grandmother owned an orchard and fruitshed. I grew up in there from when my mother made a cradle for me out of grapefruit in the big sorting bin, to when I sat up on the conveyor belt, watching for hiccups in the sorting system. Even after she couldn’t keep up with the shed anymore, we always had fruit around the house. She’s gone now, but I think of her everytime I smell oranges.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Wow! You folks sure do know how to describe scent memories! Wonderful little vignettes of your personal histories. It would be great to listen to people tell them with their accompanying emotions in their voices.
Great idea, per usual, Shelterrific people!
OK, here’s mine.
The smell of freshly picked basil rubbed between my index finger and thumb reminds me of the first summer I lived at my mother’s house after I transferred back to New Jersey from a very weird freshman college year in Connecticut. When Mom and Dave lived in Maywood, they elected to remove all the grass except a tiny patch in the middle of the garden. Instead of the grass, they had many little beds around the edges, and three funeral-sized plots in the center of the yard. At the end of the first plot was the basil garden, right next to the tomatoes. My mother’s basil grew taller than my 5′2” frame that year. She grew lemon basil, purple basil, Thai basil, and great big globe basil that you could smell at the corner before crossing the street to reach their driveway.
During the growing season, we would pinch the blossoms off the plants so they would grow thicker and fuller. My mother would listen to every drama that unfolded in my early 20s life as we waited for the tomatoes to grow to bursting fullness so that we could slice them with fresh mozzarella cheese and decorate the slices with our own leafy, fragrant basil and full-bodied olive oil.
At the harvest, Dave would take his pocket saw and cut down entire plants, carrying them by the armload up the back stairs to the kitchen where we waited with the food processor, olive oil, pine nuts, and a variety of stinky cheeses. Then came the smells, the basil mingling with the cheeses and freshly ground black pepper, the richness of the oil and pine nuts. It was heady stuff we couldn’t wait to spread on the still-warm Italian bread we had just picked up from the bakery a short walk into town.
After nearly swooning over the success of our first batch of pesto, we quickly packed several containers of the fragrant stuff into the freezer so that we could open this moment again in the middle of the snowy winter, even though we knew it could never be as delicious as it was right then. My parents and I ate tomato, cheese and basil sandwiches every day that week because we couldn’t help ourselves. We could still smell the basil everywhere. It drifted up from the garden, from where Dave had cut the stalks. My mother never tired of saying, “You can never have too much pesto.” She was right.
After the last batch of the pesto was made, I sat with my mother on the sofa in her tiny family room (an alcove adjacent to the cavernous kitchen), our summer-tanned legs folded yogi style to hold our tasting plates in our laps, I couldn’t imagine a better flavor for the summer, or better company.
Happy Mother’s Day!
May 9th, 2009 at 4:07 am
My favorite smell is the ocean, especially before a storm. I live in Boston and so often I can smell it without seeing it. I reminds me of summertime and being free to explore and having no cares or worries. Rolling down sand dunes and skipping rocks….it doesn’t get any better!
Great give away – Thank you for letting me transport myself!
Christine
May 9th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I grew up on a small street lined with old maples trees. In the spring, they have these strangely fluorescent yellow flowers that have a distinctive smell – not quite a pretty smell but a aggressive sweet smell that I find difficult to describe but I’d recognize it anywhere. Sometimes we’d take the fallen flower clusters and put them in our mouths – that same strange and wild sweetness with a bit of pollen to it.
There’s no specific memory to this smell, just childhood, running down the street after a friend on a new bike, drawing with chalk on the driveway, digging up the front garden, chasing my sister around the house. Being outside.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
My mom bought me lavender soap, shampoo, and lotion when my first son was born. Every evening I would shower and use my “stash”. The smell immediately brings me back to those first overwhelming, sleepy, emotional, awkward, and beautiful weeks. my baby is now turning seven, and we have a huge lavender plant growing in our garden. when he’s having a bad day we put some leaves in his bath and i tell him about how the lavender soothes me as well.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
The smell of extra-virgin olive oil reminds me of my great-aunt’s country house in Spain. I spent many summers visiting her and my great-uncle, chasing her chickens, and playing with her “guard dogs” (they were sweet, playful, oversized puppies, really!). The smell of olive oil always brings back memories of sitting in her kitchen, eating a snack of bread, olive oil, and salt in the afternoon.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
The smell of coconut in shampoos and lotions reminds me of home. I moved from Southern California to the mountains of North Carolina for college. Whenever I miss home and the beach, I smell my shampoo. It also helps revive me on rainy, foggy days. I think it’s sunny outside even when it’s not.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
The smell of a brand new eraser and pencil bring back wonderful childhood memories of the first day of school in the fall and the innocence of childhood. I’d give anything to be taken back to those wonderful days …
May 10th, 2009 at 6:15 am
My favorite smell is tulip flowers in spring. Growing up my parents had tulips growing all over the front yard where my brother and I would play in the freshly cut grass. My father has always been very attached to the lawn, so he was usually grooming something around the house. Every time I catch this smell I think of running around the yard as a kid.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
the sea. I surf, so I’m in the ocean a lot, and this particular sea scent doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it is an overwhelming sort of knock you back. Its not the decay scent that the ocean sometimes has, but more like a reminder of the mystery of the world you are half in half out of. It usually happens when the air is thick, and sometimes I get it when I dive through a wave with mass energy on the paddle out. If I’m lucky I’ll push up and see the prisms from the breaking wave, mixing with water and light — and that smell — I highly recommend it. Sometimes I get a hint of it in a really good bouillabaisse — mixed with saffron and tomatoes — divine.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I love this contest! This is one of my favorite memories
My favorite scent is pink grapefruit. I grew up in Maine and my Mother cooked all meals except for one–Sunday morning breakfast. My Father would make us all breakfast in bed every Sunday. When it was in season, he would include half of a pink grapefruit. I always laughed when I looked at it on my tray because it was obvious he tried very hard to prepare it delicately, but wasn’t always successful! I continue to love the scent of pink grapefruits to this day.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Everyone, I have to say, the contest theme was my husband Dave’s idea, and I love it, too! These memories are making me tear up! : )
May 10th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I love the smell of vanilla. It reminds me of my Nana, cheeks flushed red from the oven at her fifties kitchen table, baking breads and cookies for all of us grandkids to eat with the sweet tea we would drink out of antique tea cups at her dining room table
May 11th, 2009 at 5:30 am
eucalyptus and spearmint-a lotion I used during my first pregnancy and labor. Now I’m pregnant with my 3rd child and have started using it again. Brings back memories!
May 11th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Lemon verbena reminds me of when I was a little girl helping my Grandma in the kitchen, we always washed up after baking with Lemon Verbena soap!
May 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
roses….they always remind me of my mother and grandmother and of cool summer days growing up in England.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Anchovies and butter. My family used to make a wonderful fondue, bagna cauda, on special occasions. I didn’t know it was made with anchovies (I probably wouldn’t have eaten it if I had) but it was delicious. The scent haunted me for years as I grew up. I finally learned the recipe (something like this) and luckily am old enough to get past the reputation of anchovies to enjoy it again.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
No smell will ever compare with the laundry detergent I used during an incredible month-long stay in Ireland. It smelled strongly of sweet grapes –- nothing like I had ever smelled in the U.S. The week before I returned to the states, I sat in a steamy little laundry room and washed all of my clothes so they would smell like that when I returned home. A full year after returning from Ireland, I was going through my suitcases and packing for another trip, and I happened to pull an old soft blue t-shirt from a hidden pocket. When it hit the air, the shirt still smelled like that grapey fresh Irish laundry detergent, and it brought me to tears.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:23 am
One of my favorite smells has to be printed matte paper. No matter where I am, if I find some I just have to smell it. It just reminds me of old books as a kid. I even got Demeter’s Papeback perfume because it smells like that paper: )
May 12th, 2009 at 6:14 am
The smell of lilacs transports me through time whenever I catch the slightest wiff of it.
When I was growing up we lived next door to an old lady named Rosie. Rosie’s husband had passed long before we moved into the neighborhood and her only daughter lived hours away. Rosie sort of adopted my sister and I, and our family adopted her back. She rarely left her house, and never ventured out of her yard.
Planted along the hedges between our two yards were 3 gorgeous lilac trees. Rosie had planted them, two light purple and one dark, when she and her husband had first bought the house. The trees hung over our driveway and I could smell them from my bedroom every spring.
Rosie was happy to allow my sister and I to cut bunches of fresh lilacs from her trees. The bouquets ended up as Mother’s Day gifts for my mom, were plunked into mason jars to decorate our kitchen table and were wrapped in wet paper towels and brought to school for favorite teachers.
Rosie has long since passed, but whenever I smell lilac I remember her generosity to two little girls who she came to think of as family.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:37 am
One scent forever emblazoned in my memory is that of my mother’s skin in summertime. When I was a very little girl, my mother would join me in the water at our local beach, and together we would swim, bob up and down, and float. Mom always taught me the importance of respecting the water and not fighting it if I panicked. Floating, treading–these things seemed to me like special talents to which only I was privvy.
When I did tire after a while, Mom would scoop me up in her arms and wade chest-deep in the salty Long Island Sound. The water might have been chilly, but her skin was always warm and smelled comforting, like the scent of warm sunlight pouring through a window screen or the familiar musky sweetness of my own pillow. It was, perhaps, the only scent more familiar to me than my own. Mom laughed, and bobbed, danced and glided through the water. Smiling at each other and laughing together, our eyes stinging from salt water, I never felt more loved, safe, and secure.
Nowadays, the only time I come across that scent is when I’m in the ocean with my two little boys. For a brief moment, I forget myself. And then I realize it’s me who now evokes the scent of childhood’s unconditional, loving, endless summer.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:01 am
[...] many great scents, so many amazing memories, but the Shelterrific team agrees: this comment by Krista really got to us. It’s not only a [...]