What scents/smells transport you back in time?

[ThirtyThrillionThreeTrees]

Anyone else find some scents evoke nostalgia and instant recall of happy memories from decades ago.

Here's mine:

1. Wild Roses - back to my grandparents garden playing with cousins on Sundays after mass
2. Rhubarb - other grandmother's house. She would always make us rhubarb tarts (loved it then, don't like it at all now)
3. Bodyshop White Musk - in a school friend's house getting ready for teenage discos
4. Hugo Boss Night - first love wore it. I cam smell it from miles away
5. Sambuca - first year of college

Partner thinks I'm bonkers, the only one he can come up with is the smell of burning reminds him of when their garage burnt down 🙁

Bonus points if you can guess my age from the last 3!!

Coal fire and pipe smoke - grandad
Bodyshop white musk -me, early teens, i try to forget and be more Chanel no 5 these days.
Chanel no 5 - glamorous friend of mum, M. She is still.glam at 75.
Lavender- granny, she had tons of lavender bags in drawers
Silage - constant country camping holidays as a kid. See also burning tyres due to French farmer kick offs in the eighties.

CK One was me at university for sure.

Mulled wine is always my parents annual xmas party, sadly not held since covid due to ill health. I could never make it as well as my dad can.

Freshly laid tarmac - it reminds me of being at infant school, when they were laying tarmac on the road next to the school.

mothballs!!-takes me back to staying at my grandpas house

New leather. My dide was a souter.

(English translation, my grandfather was a shoe maker/repairer)

Such a lovely thread. and all the other memories made me nod and smile.

Impulse O2 (in the green bottle!!)
Reminds me of a year 8 trip to Italy where I snogged a boy for the first time!

What baffles me is - if I smell new cut grass I am instantly transported back to being at the local County Show. Bouncing on the bouncy castle with my mates from school and watching the show jumping.

But, why? Why that memory? I smelled cut grass before and after this, and in many more emotional circumstances. So why would that smell attach to THAT particular memory?

Wright's Cole Tar Soap. When I was a little girl I spent a lot of time with our gardener and his wife while my parents were abroad and they had WCTS in their bathroom... ♥ ♥

Lilac flowers.

I used to pick them for my first class teacher as I walked to school.

Plat Doh, Christmas in the 70's, I opened a pot for my DGS the other day and it took me right back. Off to watch Morecombe and Wise on you tube for the full effect.

The smell of ironing. It used to greet me when I arrived home after school - especially the smell of ironed sheets.
Mitsouko perfume - DM lived in Australia and when I visited I'd buy it duty free. Shower, dress, spritz of Mitsouko and the pair of us off out.

Lynx Africa-first serious boyfriend and all that comes with that. Walked past a guy wearing it the other day and instantly transported back to being 17.
rose soaps-my nan who would often give these as a gift and we put them in the pants and socks drawer.
frying onions and cumin- my mum, this is the start to many of her meals so it’s like being at home with her.
-cut grass, playing on the school field in summer making nests out of the cut grass for birds to use (on the ground, surrounded my children!)
-vosene, my brother growing up, he reaked of it!

Samsara perfume - school trip to France
Jazz aftershave - music lessons in comp
Gordons gin - Christmas! Reminds me of a sneaky lunch hour we spent in the pub when in the upper 6th. We went back to French class and were all a bit drowsy…

Proper tomato plants - reminds me of my grandpa's greenhouse
Fishermans friends - dad ate them like sweets for years
Vanderbilt perfume - my lovely mum
Ysatis and Byzance perfume - my perfumes of the 80s!

Love this thread.

There’s a perfume scent that reminds me of a teacher from my primary school!

And musty, petrol shed smell reminds me of my dad.

There’s also a cloying, sweet scent that I occasionally smell in the countryside which instantly takes me back to where I grew up.

Ironing.
Cakes baking.
Sunday roast.
Cut grass.
TCP.
Petrol (from Dad filling up the car).

The smell of newly cut hawthorne - from home

The smell of my DM's coffee meringues

Davidoff Cool Water

🙂

I love this. Some I can immediately relate to.

Cannot believe I forgot Lynx...the smell of every teenage boy in the late 90s.

Oooh I love this!

Popcorn- as you walk in to the cinema, a real treat once in a blue moon with the tango ice blast!

Horses - that musky smell that most people hate - all time favourite. Mucking out was a great part of my childhood (unbelievable now!)

Suncream - memories of it being lathered all over every inch of my body, & fun holiday resorts, evening discos & a long summer break

& Ready Brek - I don't know why... I never ate it as a kid but I think it was something my mum would love me to have eaten, so probably was put in front of me (loaded with sugar!) a fair few times.

Cabotine whips me back to the upstairs hallway of my french exchange's house in 1991

Mitsouko takes me back to sitting on the steps of the Holyhead ferry waiting to disembark, among a horde of unwashed bodies who had hit the duty free perfumes while on board

Coal smoke in cold air takes me back to St Anne's park in Clontarf on Sunday afternoons in the 1980s

Pears soap takes me back to a childhood friend's bathroom with a clear shower curtain with parrots printed on it

I have to avoid most of the perfumes I loved in the past because they are too strongly associated with other times and other places. It's not that the memories are bad - most are good, but it is unsettling.

Me too 🩷

Chapstick original lip balm reminds me of snowy days when my mum used to make us wear it and she used to put on a pair of (inexplicably for snowy weather, high heeled) boots with a broken zip (she put a brown envelope inside them)

The smell of overcooked vegetables remind me of my aunties house!

Zoflora Fresh Linen reminds me of lockdown as I was using a lot of during that time

Bodyshop White Musk reminds me of my Mum

There's a scent I got a sample of when I ordered a candle from a company, I sniffed it and it actually made me cry
This is the message I sent them

I’m obsessed.. it smells like home. I lost my horse last year and this reminds me of riding in the summer when the dry grass is all crunchy under you and the sun was burning on my neck, it's an instant memory of one of the last rides with her on a long hot summer day