Aromatherapy is still one of the big “in” things. Everybody’s got aromatherapy candles, bath salts, lotions, sachets, and body spray. These delightful concoctions are supposed to promote health and well being and affect mood. But you know what? Most of them don’t do a whole lot for me. They smell all right, some of them give me headaches, but they really just don’t do anything to relax me or improve my mood.
I’ve got my own aromatherapy – my own set of scents that relax me and improve my mood, I guess if they’re relaxing me and improving my mood they’re promoting health as well. My aromatherapy scents aren’t anything special. They’re just everyday smells that remind me of home – comfort smells if you will.
One of the top ones on the list is air-popped popcorn. A lot of days we’d get off the school bus and walk up our long, long driveway and enter a house that smelled of fresh air-popped popcorn. I don’t know how Mama knew just when to start the popper so that it’d be ready and waiting and still hot when we got home, but she always did. I loved coming home anyway, and that just made it better.
Then there’s the smell of wood smoke. I was lucky enough to grow up in one house. We built it and moved in when I was two and I didn’t leave it until I graduated high school. We had a fireplace originally, but we replaced that with a wood-burning stove insert. I always loved to smell the smoke drifting down from the chimney and to hear the cheery crackle of the logs burning. It was always wonderful to get off the bus or out of the car and smell that smoke and know how toasty warm it was going to be inside.
Bread baking is another favorite. My mother always made bread from scratch. When she’d bake it the whole house would smell like a bakery. We couldn’t wait till the bread came out of the oven and was cool enough to cut and eat.
My other favorite is buttercups – which some people call daffodils. They’re my favorite flower, we had them in our wedding and I’ve got them scattered all over around our house. They’re bright, happy flowers with the sweetest smell and they always are the brave little bits of sunshine that herald the approaching end of winter. I love to smell buttercups.
The list goes on, of course, but those are my top four favorites. Skip the expensive store brands of aromatherapy for me – just air-pop some popcorn, bake a little bread, light a wood fire or waft the scent of buttercups my direction and I’ll have my aromatic therapy and I’ll be just fine.
