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

[tomorrowisanotherdate]

scent boosters, to go in laundry, air fresheners that squirt puffs of pollutants at you - the tv is full of adverts for these things, so presumably someone is buying them. I just don't get it though. Loading your family's home atmosphere with a load of unnecessary and unpleasant air pollutants, and paying for the privilege? Why?

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!

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 😂

oh dear god

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The use of "chemicals" in cleaning products, perfumery, and skincare is almost as (if not equally as) regulated as their use in medicines.

The EU in particular is extremely hot on such legislation.

Obviously, given Brexit, I'm not sure how that legislation will continue to be adhered to. Hopefully just as stringently as it has been for decades.

I also use soap in the shower - another lightbulb moment which started when trying to reduce plastic and realised that actually, soap lasts a lot longer and gets you feeling cleaner than shower gel. The nice French savon de Marseille is about £2 - £3 a bar and lasts weeks. It does smell when I;m using it but doesn't linger. Who wants to have soap/shower gel, deo and perfume all competing scents on their body, and then more competing scent on their clothes?

I'm sure you spend some of your money on things other people find unnecessary too 🤷‍♀️

I buy them because I can afford them, because I like the smell and because it's a little thing that makes me happy.

I'm autistic and find the world very overwhelming sometimes, so I'll do whatever I can to make my home feel as safe and reassuring to me as possible.

I grew up in a house full of this shit, both parents smoked and if we weren’t choking on cigarette smoke it was air fresheners, bleach and perfumes. It was also the 80s so hairspray was king! One parent at least would open all the doors and windows when he got up so the house would be full of fresh air, until the other closed everything and sprayed everywhere with a fag in her gob.

As a result I dont use many sprays, I use a dettol one on my bed daily but only after I’ve opened all the windows, and in the dcs rooms when they are at school. I’m immune compromised and my snotty brats are always in my bed, so for me it’s a germ killing thing. Bleach was god in my home growing up but I only use it in the toilet these days and only when needed, for the most part I use hot water when cleaning and yes, white vinegar for a lot of things. Fabric softener just for mine and DHs towels and only because we don’t have a dryer so our towels get quite hard. DCs get extra water washes due to eczema issues so very few chemicals in the clothes.

I do like a nice candle, but I don’t fill the house full and I buy as a rare treat. I have started to use oil diffusers since getting a very smelly dog and the dettol spray gets used on the furniture they sit on. I’m lucky though as there is usually someone home all day so windows and doors can be left open. I’m also able to regularly buy fresh flowers which I love the scent of.

Perfume I do love but I try to be subtle.

Im also lucky no one has bad smelly feet, I had a couple of exs who did and I definitely used spays living with them. One of my exs friends, who I’d known most of my life too was actually banned for staying over his feet stunk so much.

One of my DBs won’t allow anything scent related in his house, his wife and DDs very rarely wear perfumes either, he’d never admit it but I think he hates them (scents not his wife and DDs) because of how much our mother smothered the house and herself in them. He won’t use aerosol deodorants or aftershave either Before anyone comments on him being controlling, my SIL has things she hates that my db won’t do to please her including becoming a vegetarian.

after my kids have been in the bathroom the manufactured smell is infinitely preferable.

On the other hand, my friend bought me a hyacinth and the smell makes me feel sick. I can’t get rid of it as she keeps popping round but I am trying to kill it asap without it being obvious. It gives me a headache.

I’m with you OP. Can remember seeing the warning about the danger to aquatic life on a box of Zoflora and just thinking about the fact that these products end up somewhere was enough to really put me off. The other thing that I hate is unnecessary antibacterial stuff in hand wash soap (and even washing up liquid now I think…). It’s really easy to exist in a bubble where you forget (or avoid thinking about!) about the effects of what you do but just because e.g you drive a car, doesn’t mean that you’re a lost cause for anything that might reduce your impact on the natural world. I do think that marketing companies have pushed the idea that artificial scents = clean so hard that it will take ages to change this.

Please don't call yourself insufferable - do what is right for you, with the acceptance that others are free to make different choices. I used soap nuts too a while back, they really do work fairly well, but I just didn't ever get round to buying new ones when they finally stopped working. I've used the Eco balls too, with mixed results. I like a basic biological powder these days but am also using up my liquid stash.

But scented candles, perfume, and antiperspirant are linked to environmental pollution and health issues.

I mean I personally avoid antiperspirant at all costs because they freak me out.

My point is simply that we all have our vices and boundaries.

Can remember seeing the warning about the danger to aquatic life on a box of Zoflora

But it smells nice! 🙄 People just don't care about anything else than their own needs and wants. Same reason as they buy endless cheap shit from Shein and Temu, because it's cheap and they want to.

I mean, you could say the same thing about people buying smartphones, or synthetic clothing (which isn't necessarily cheap), or designer handbags - or 1001 other things that aren't strictly essential and that cause damage to our environment.

There isn't a single person out there who is perfect and who never does anything to harm the world around them. So I'm not sure why some people insist on acting so superior when it comes to this one thing.

Lavender is not 'old lady' it's a beautiful natural plant that smells great. It's actually very fashionable in perfumes at the moment and my DD can't get enough of the Lush Sleepy fragrance which is natural lavender and vanilla.

It’s nothing like smoking.

If you vaped natural oils you’d do yourself just as much damage as vaping any air freshener.

And if you think ‘craft’ businesses and pushers of ‘natural’ products who scaremonger about big business will do you no harm…well.

As is often said in a different context about ‘complementary’ medicine, “better big pharma than woo harma”.