to not understand why people spend money to pollute their homes with pointless chemicals?

Quite apart from smelling horrible (imo), why would you waste the money?

We have pages of threads about the CoL crises and yet people waste money on things that are totally unnecessary.

To say nothing of the environmental damage of chopping down rain forests to grow palm oil for all those ghastly candles, or flushing 'laundry freshener into our rivers.

I had what I can only describe as a tragic, midlife crisis about 5 years ago and I only buy unscented natural soaps and I am the sort of insufferable idiot who makes natural shampoo. I’m my defence, I was told I was about to die. So that sparked all the soap nut, natural nonsense.

I don’t have any friends to drone on about it to, so that’s something, at least.

My teenage self who reeked of Body Shop sprays would hate me.

Pray tell what "chemicals" smell like, being as everything is actually chemicals?

Even just walking down the laundry aisle in the supermarket the smell is so strong. There's no need for it really is there, the marketers have convinced people that strongly scented is the same as clean, when it's really not. We don't need scent boosters and fabric conditioner and anti-bacterial laundry whatever to be CLEAN, but some people think they do. And plug ins, and highly scented cleaning products and whatever other type of smell, all competing with each other.

I do quite like a scented candle, and use perfume and antiperspirant. But my laundry powder is a bog-standard detergent in a massive tub from Costco, for cleaning we use Stardrops which is basically just soap, we don't have air fresheners or carpet cleaners or the rest of it.

I don't blame Mrs Hinch. I blame the Shake and Vac lady and her putting the freshness back.

We had smelly things nearly 40 years ago when I was growing up. Pot pourri that would end up just dust. Those weird plastic air fresheners with kind of sticky stuff inside. Sprays.

I'm a big fan of open windows, but that's not always possible because:
Is fucking cold 9 months of the year.
The coal fire next door.
Being at work.

I’m with you, OP. Even reed diffusers and candles smell like chemicals to me.

I’m with you - the chemicals we use entirely unnecessarily are causing a huge increase in allergies and skin issues etc in babies and children.
It’s one of those things government needs to start regulating but we’re in so much shit with everything else I doubt they’ll get round to it in the next decade

It's like when conspiracy theorists use the word "toxins" is a very vague way. 🤣

Well you might want to look into the ethics of coffee in terms of environmental impact, slave labour, and health. It is a drug after all.

I'm trying to work out why I feel that buying smelling laundry stuff or plug ins is genuinely stupid and antisocial and unnecessary and other things like carpets made with toxins or driving a car or eating meat is more of a difficult and understandable choice.

Think probably it's because in my lifetime the smelly things have come in, and I remember when nobody had them and it was all perfectly fine. I just can't see why you'd let yourself be taken in by that newish industry knowing what we now all know about how advertising works.

However I'm with the pp who said basically it shouldn't be sold. Like a lot of things, I think it's massively mean, duplicitous and disingenuous to expect the consumer to carry the load of all the moral choice. Let's just have a better social democracy where innovation that benefits the planet and our health is rewarded, and innovation that damages it is so heavily regulated that it dies out.

oh dear god

Haha yep, pretty much!

Cats are agile and can jump surprisingly high. One of ours can open doors and another can jump nearly six feet from standing.

Nothing is safe 😂

OP, whilst I agree with you, it was only natural that you'd get lots of defensive posts given the way you've worded the title of your OP.

We're all marketeers dreams in our own way although I'm trying my best to step away from the most obviously harmful and needless stuff. To me, that is anything highly fragranced.

I think it's getting worse (for me) as I get older. The cheap perfumed body sprays on supermarket shelves are a killer for me - I'm a secondary school teacher so this is a particular nightmare. I'm also planning a school trip for next year which involves 28hrs travel by coach so the pupils are going to live me when I tell them that aerosols and perfume are banned on the bus🙈.

I used to be quite fond of perfume too but I'm finding most perfumes I
Come across to be unbearable. Again, not judging, but when synthetic fragrances make one ill, it's hard to not hate them!

What do you use on your bodies?

So you have nothing on a high shelf a cats can’t get to?

No. They can jump up on shelves and would see a bowl of water or half a lemon as something to be played with, or knocked over, or eaten.

I also don't want to use a lemon or essential oils around them because, once again, they are toxic to cats 🤦🏻‍♀️

My husbands family are obsessed with sticking all sorts in laundry and covering themselves in perfume. you can smell them coming before you see them. I don’t knew what my SIL uses, but she makes me sneeze if I get too close.

I am tight as fuck. No way I’m paying for anything extra it’s for “nice” smells.

I use soap nuts for washing as they last ages and no other scented stuff in the house.

It's essentially trying to emulate fresh - some do it better than others, but many are just excessively strong.

I don't own a cat but my understanding is that many cats appear to think 'challenge accepted' when you place anything on an apparently hard to reach location.

TV ads for laundry detergents are obsessed at the moment with FRESH! FRESHNESS! OMG, so FRESH!!

I read that as artificial pong, but each to their own.

But to many of us, it doesn't "smell nice". Fabric conditioner can be really strong, it catches in the back of my throat. We don't use it and it's very noticeable when I'm volunteering in a charity shop and open up a bag of highly conditioned items. And it makes towels go all slippery and weird. The scent boosters in particular really perplex me, why did someone decide your washing needed to smell anything other than clean and fresh? And keep smelling like that for weeks?

I think lots of people are confusing a natural clean smell (like you get when drying washing outside on a windy day) with the artificial fragrances. As if there's not a strong smell off your washing or in your living room, it's not "clean".

Batshit. And don't get me started on all the plastic bottles and packaging this stuff is sold in.

@Tedaaaaaaaaah real vanilla (from the orchid family) is phenomenally expensive to produce, so even in the most expensive perfumes, it's rarely the real thing.

So you have nothing on a high shelf a cats can’t get to?

I hope you all also take care when cooking eg oven foods. They can be carcinogenic

Lol at this thread.

who cares?

I have recently bought a plug in as I have a very old dog who smells.
I don’t drink alcohol or eat dairy though.
do I win?

@Naytr33 citrus is toxic to cats 🙄