That clean smell.

[Mako]

There's some things that naturally smell clean to us. Pine. Bleach. Freesias.

And there's some things that smell dirty to us. Rotting meat. The ringpiece of someone who's missed a couple of showers. Orlando.

How much of this is innate, and how much is learned? We know that the smell of feces is deliberately objectionable to stop us from being near it. But do we know the smell of clean things instinctively, or do we pick it up from our parents?

[Roo]

Originally Posted by Mako

There's some things that naturally smell clean to us. Pine. Bleach. Freesias.

I'm going to question that. I think there are things that smell pleasant and unpleasant. Bleach straight out of the bottle is unpleasantly strong to me. For me, clean is a subset of pleasant.

ETA: Perfume, although sometimes characterized as clean, is often unbearably bad-smelling to me.

[Dragonlady]

Fake pine cleaner doesn't smell clean any more than grape Kool aid tastes like grapes.

A faint whiff of bleach, ok. What they label "clean laundry", not so much. Although clothes or linens hung outside smell clean to me.

[Chacoguy]

Really clean things, like a hospital, actually smell like things that are toxic.

[Rebo]

Fake "chemical" smells never smell like clean to me. Bleach smells like bleach, but not "clean" for some reason. Some soaps smell clean to me, but overly scented ones make me gag. I'm very sensitive to smells. Scents-itive. Heh! I crack me up.

Fresh mown grass I associate with clean, for some reason. However, I hate the smell of rain on hot pavement, which most people like. I like lemon and orange-scented cleaners, but it depends. Whatever scent Palmolive anti-bacterial has recently changed to, I love! It's sorta orange-y, but not really.

So, my uninformed opinion is - it depends.

[Mako]

Originally Posted by Roo

Bleach straight out of the bottle is unpleasantly strong to me.

Ms. Mako said the same and I agree, (which is why we usually have Domestos "pink" bleach which smells of...um...attar of rose?).

Originally Posted by Dragonlady

Fake pine cleaner doesn't smell clean any more than grape Kool aid tastes like grapes.

But when you smell it, you know that a place has been cleaned. When did we learn that? I guess we've been conditioned.

[Radical Edward]

Obviously there are some smells that we have evolved to associate as good or bad. The smell of food is good, the smell of rotten flesh is bad. I have to think that over thousands of years this has been programmed in.

Chemical smells, on the other hand, must have been learned. Most chemical smells haven't been around long enough to have been involved in evolution. Has pine cleaner existed for ten thousand years? No. My ex always said that anything that smelled like Pine Sol must be clean, and he learned that because his parents cleaned their house like once a year, and they used Pine Sol because it was cheap and effective. When their house was clean, it smelled like Pine Sol. I think concentrated Lysol smells clean, and laundry that's been dried with Bounce sheets. But Bounce sheets specifically, rather than Gain or Snuggle, because it was Bounce that my family used and Bounce that I was conditioned to associate with clean laundry.

[stormie]

babies are not repelled by the smell of poop. I think our response to most moderately or low intensity smells are at primarily learned. Strong smells of any type can be . . . sort of nasally painful, in a physical sense, like a bright light in our eyes. Strong, damaging smells - remember smell is the floating molecules of what makes up the stuff - can hurt the nose, and are thus repellent (thus is a nice word.)

Scent learning is really strong - one of the most quickly learned types of associations, and the association lasts a very long time. It is mediated . . the part that does it is the 'shark brain'. Smell associations don't require much of a brain.

There is no doubt an evolutionary component of smell.

[Jay Tea]

What about those odours we 'know' are bad, but we love nonetheless? Tobacco, petrol, magic markers, crack cocaine...

[Khampelf]

I love the smell of diluted bleach. I do lots of housework in other people's homes and bleach smells to me like a job well done.

"I love the smell of bleach in the morning. One time I had a big job, and when it was all over I walked around. I didn't see anything, not one stinking spot grody. But that smell, that chlorine smell, it smelled like ... clean to me."

[Dudley]

Originally Posted by Mako

And there's some things that smell dirty to us. <snippage> Orlando.

My brother lives in the next city over, Kissimmee. I totally thought the entire area smelled like a huge toilet.

Glad I'm not the only one.

[Solfy]

I'm going to go with mixed bag. There are some chemical smells that to me smell good, not in a "I'd like to dab this on my wrists and smell it all day" kind of way, but good as in, "Hey, this solvent doesn't make me recoil in horror!" There are others that smell like unadulterated evil. While there might be some variation, there's general agreement of which are okay and which aren't.

Good smells that I think of as "clean" are those that I've encountered in clean situations, like coming home from school and finding that Mom spent the afternoon scrubbing walls and the whole house smells like Murphy's Oil Soap, or when getting a nose-full of laundry fresh out of the wash. I think that's a learned response. They are good smells naturally, but I've been conditioned to associate them with cleanliness.

[stormie]

Originally Posted by Jay Tea

What about those odours we 'know' are bad, but we love nonetheless? Tobacco, petrol, magic markers, crack cocaine...

Associative learning. Tobacco = happy ergo tobacco smell = good
It's all in the amygdala, baby

[Solfy]

I grew up in a smoking household. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke and cigarette ashes. I've never smoked tobacco. It does not make me happy.
But I love the smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes.

[eleanorigby]

It's a mixed bag, IMO. And I think association plays a huge part. I like the smell of skunk, from about a mile away, for instance. One of the most potent smells for me is a mix of citrus, alcohol, cigarette smoke and privet (all outdoors and at the same time). It comes from my childhood summers on Cape Cod. It smells like heaven to me. I've never smelled it again and now that the summer stock theater has banned smoking and not renewed its liquor license, I'll probably never smell that combination again.

It's not so much "clean" as fresh for me. The scent of what I'm going to call chlorophyll (the smell of fresh, young green things growing) is clean (and fresh) to me. Even the scent of freshly turned dirt appeals. Other smells that are positive for me are chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, privet hedge, wood smoke, daffodils, leather upholstery, mimeographs fresh off the machine, clean laundry, faint bleach, newly mown grass, snow, citrus and the air just before a thunder storm.

Negative smells are garbage, poop, overly ripe bananas, rotting vegetation, mildew, diesel fumes, petrol, asphalt, charcoal, gamey meat, sweaty clothes, adolescent boys.

I'm sure there are tons more of both categories. Smell is such a primitive sense--our lizard brains can be wrong, but in most cases I'd trust it. I will say that covering up smells with pine or lemon or perfumy things--Glade, I'm looking at you--just makes the offensive smell worse, IMO. I'd rather smell the garbage than Baby Powder Scented Coverup of garbage. :eew:

[Euryphaessa]

Originally Posted by Solfy

I grew up in a smoking household. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke and cigarette ashes. I've never smoked tobacco. It does not make me happy.
But I love the smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes.

Same here!

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

Really clean things, like a hospital, actually smell like things that are toxic.

Except that hospitals are one of the dirtiest environments out there. They are full of sick people exhaling into the air.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by mswas

Except that hospitals are one of the dirtiest environments out there. They are full of sick people exhaling into the air.

Yup. Hospitals are cesspools of filth, no matter how many white coats and beige corridors with commercial art and fake ferns there are. It's not so much the air as every and all surfaces--the phones, the counters, the floors, the walls, the bed frames, mattresses etc*. Wash your hands frequently while inside one and wash again when you get home.

I don't allow my nursing shoes into the house and wouldn't allow my kids to hug me once home until I had changed out of my scrubs. But you're right about the smells in a hospital. I do like the smell of Betadine (like iodine), ditto isopropyl alcohol. And benzoine smells awesome. I'm a little weird...




*not deliberately so and despite the heavy duty cleaners used.

[Colonel Plink]

Horse sweat is one of the cleanest things I've ever smelled.

[stormie]

Originally Posted by Solfy

I grew up in a smoking household. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke and cigarette ashes. I've never smoked tobacco. It does not make me happy.
But I love the smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes.

It is specific to the person or beastie, what smells are associated with happy. There are a lot of smells that at one time made me sick from allergies, and I still don't like them. But when I was little my mom and sister and I would take the bus downtown, ultra fun, for a long time I liked bus fume smell.

[Solfy]

My washing machine is broken so I took my laundry to Mom's house Sunday. I've noticed the different smell in all the clothes I washed there. It makes me smile.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by stormie

It is specific to the person or beastie, what smells are associated with happy. There are a lot of smells that at one time made me sick from allergies, and I still don't like them. But when I was little my mom and sister and I would take the bus downtown, ultra fun, for a long time I liked bus fume smell.

I heard an anecdote from the 19th century that went:

"Gramma, I hate the smell of all those men smoking their cigars."

"Get to love it, sweety. It's the smell of money."