Smell This!

Many years ago when shopping for perfume and getting seriously overwhelmed with odor, a young woman working at the shop brought me a tin filled with coffee beans to smell. Why? To clear my nose of scents and bring my palette back to neutral. It worked... I was able to be "objective" again and continue smelling the hundreds of perfumes I had ahead of me, with the tin of coffee beans close at hand for every ten smellies I reached.

According to her, one's nose can only take about ten perfume/fragrances before the sniffer is blown out. This is true for some. I think my nose is tainted after about three sniffs. When I am formulating and scenting, I always smell the final product to double check it all came out as lovely as intended, even though I follow my own recipe exactly. Sometimes, I walk over to the espresso machine, lift the lid on the fresh beans reservoir and take a deep inhale. This brings me back to zero so I can smell again accurately.

If you are planning on visiting the perfume section in your nearby department store, bring a cup of fresh coffee beans in a closed container, so you can come home with the scent you actually smelled and not the one you thought you smelled.