Home Fragrance & Candles

Starting a clove orange for the linen drawer

Started a clove orange for the linen drawer this weekend and my thumbs ache from pushing the cloves in. It smells like the bindery paste pot crossed with Christmas.

Clove Sweet orange

One candle by the bath, rain on the skylight

Long day, hot bath, one magnolia candle on the windowsill and rain on the skylight. That's the whole evening.

Magnolia

First turf fire of the autumn in the front room

Here's a thing. We lit the first turf fire of the autumn last night, and this morning the front room still smells of it, sweet and earthy, a bit like strong tea left stewing on the hob and a bit like the bog road after rain. The dog came in from the yard and…

Birch tar

Sunday frankincense cone with the radiators on

Fun fact: a French public health sheet on candles, incense and indoor air says incense gives off higher concentrations of pollutants than candles, while what a candle releases hangs around in the air longer. [My high school French got a workout.] I definitely…

Frankincense

Rose petals drying in my mother's biscuit tin

My roses are only in bud this spring, but I opened my mother's old biscuit tin of dried petals and geranium leaves and it still smells of her hallway.

Rose Geranium

Polishing boots in the back porch on a Sunday

Right then. Sunday job: boots on newspaper in the back porch, a tin of dubbin and a brush. The porch smells of the factory floor for an hour after, wax and hide and a bit of something smoky. Forty years around a good hide and I should have known you never…

Leather Birch tar

Lavender bags for the airing cupboard, from the garden

Morning all, the lavender I cut in the summer has been hanging upside down in the shed, and this weekend I finally stripped the stalks and filled the little cotton bags for the airing cupboard. Rub the heads between your palms over a bowl and the buds drop…

Lavender

Flat viewings when my coats smell of peat smoke

We're selling the flat and the first viewings are this weekend. My partner says it smells like a bothy, because of my coats in the hall and the smoky candles I like. I can't smell it at all. What would you do before people come round?

Flipping the reeds in a bathroom diffuser

My flatmate put a reed diffuser in our small bathroom. The first days it was very strong, now I smell nothing. Do you turn the sticks? How often? It is a fig smell, I like it.

Fig

Candles, incense and diffusers: what I took from the Class

Read the Class on what candles, incense and diffusers do to indoor air on my break. Two things I'm keeping: none of them cleans the air, they all add to it, and a lit candle never gets left alone in a room. The second one I could have told you from the fire…

Pouring candles in jam jars with my granddaughter

Morning all, my granddaughter came for the weekend and we had a go at pouring candles into old jam jars. Melted plain wax smells of next to nothing, a bit like warm crayons, then the lavender candle scent went in and the whole kitchen changed in a second.…

Lavender

Apple peel and cinnamon simmering on the hob

Parents' evening tonight, so before I left for school I put apple peel, a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in a pan of water on the lowest heat. The whole flat smells like crumble with none of the work. Turned it off before I went out, obviously.

Cinnamon Clove

Why can't I smell my own house any more?

Mates walk in and say the house smells of varnish and kauri gum. I smell nothing. I was away up north on a job and when I came back I got it for about a minute, then it was gone again. What's going on?

Thread of the week: your home in three smells

Thread of the week: your home in three smells, right now, wherever you're sitting. 1) No candles or sprays, only what's already there. 2) One smell from the kitchen, one from the room you're in, one you only notice when you come in from outside. 3) Your own…

Cardamom Coffee Ginger

Piñon smoke over the street at dusk

First cold evening in Santa Fe and half the street lit their kiva fireplaces. Piñon smoke drifting low over the adobe walls, sweet, a little like pine sap on warm hands. Best smell of the year, every year.

Pine and fir

My grandmother's cedar chest, opened for the winter blankets

Opened my grandmother's cedar chest at the foot of our bed for the winter blankets. Twenty years in that box and the wood still smells sharp and dry, like a fresh-cut board.

Cedarwood