POSTING #143

Scents and Nonsense

I am afraid this Posting is going to be a bit of a rant!

Perhaps you would prefer to spend the next few minutes doing something else---something useful like clipping your toe nails, sorting out tatty underwear, or polishing some silver.

I assure you, I'll understand.

To those who are still with me, I want to make it clear that I am not one of those who decries the role of chemistry in our lives.

The white-coated boffins with their test tubes have created some wonderful, life-enhancing products. Where would we be without plastics (he says as he types on a plastic keyboard, checks the words on a plastic screen, saves everything on a plastic disk etc. etc.)

 But artificial scents are something else!

In olden times, people used a mortar and pestle to mash the petals of roses, lily of the valley, lavender and other flowers, then added a little alcohol and some aromatic oils to produce perfumes.

The result was a wholesome fragrance that lifted one's spirits.

And then the chemists decided they could produce fragrances cheaper and better by using jugs of crude coil or lumps of coal. They would bombard atoms, split compounds, excite molecules---that kind of alchemist's stuff.

Society ended up with heavy, artificial perfumes and aftershave that caused people with less than perfect lungs (like yours truly) to cough and wheeze.

Then came fragrance-free zones and we could breathe again. Just another example that people are basically decent---when they saw that wearing perfume or aftershave was on a par with breaking wind in a crowd they stopped applying them.

But the chemists, having lost that battle, have shifted ground.

Now they are trying to convince us that our homes smell awful, what with cooking odours, sweaty hockey socks, and odoriferous dogs and cats. The answer, according to the chemists, is to plug in a fragrance dispenser, or go from room to room with a spray bomb.

And the chemists have also moved on to clothes. It is no longer enough that clothes should be clean. They have to smell 'right'.

Which brings me to the subject of my rant. (And not a minute too soon, I can hear someone saying.)

My wife, Pat, had just finished an elaborate, king-bed-sized quilt after several hundred hours of work. over 9 months. Now she needed to wash it and since it was too heavy for our washer and drier, she took it to a careful and responsible laundry that we have been using since our B&B days.

Some of the fabrics and threads used in the quilt are delicate so Pat gave the owner a new container of the cold water detergent that she has been using for 50 years to wash cashmere sweaters and other delicate things.

A few days later Pat picked up the quilt. It looked perfect---the colours hadn't run, the fabrics hadn't shrunk and no threads had pulled loose.

Except...

Except that the quilt smelled. It is hard to describe the odour but I suppose it was a chemist's attempt to imitate a floral fragrance that just hadn't worked. One of our friends said it was a stale smell as though the quilt had been locked away in a damp cupboard for years.

In truth, it was a thoroughly disagreeable smell, a smell, furthermore, that threatened to close my air channels whenever I got a whiff of it.

To make matters worse, the quilt had a greasy feel.

Looking for the culprit, Pat sniffed the detergent container. The scent-free detergent she had been using for decades now had a scent. The same scent as in the quilt!

The laundry re-washed the quilt, using a scent-free detergent in cold water. The odour was less but it was still too strong to have on a bed or even on a chair in the bedroom over night---we tested.

Checking on the Internet, I found that the original company had been taken over by a new firm. I suspect the new owners decided  to give the product some pizzazz by adding that horrible scent. (I wonder if Bain Capital had a role in the takeover!)

A further search led me to a support forum for athletes in which joggers, cyclists and runners complained about the new, awful scent in the detergent they had used for years to wash their spandex outfits. It was the same detergent we had used.

Pat was understandably distraught and angry, and I offered to call the manufacturer's 1-800 number to see if the company had any suggestions on how to remove THEIR scent.

I explained our problem to the 1-800 man. He said that the company no longer made a non-scent detergent. When I expressed surprise, his tone---although courteous---suggested that he thought that the next thing I would be asking for would be a car without a front seat.

Scents were a good thing. And that was that!

I asked if he could check with the company's chemists to see if they had any suggestions about how to remove the scent from our quilt.

He put me on hold for 5 minutes during which, I am sure, he was regaling the chemists in the lab with stories about this 'real one' he had on the phone.

Finally, he came back with two bits of advice. First, wash the quilt again in just cold water, with no detergent.

If that didn't work, we should send it to a dry-cleaner!

Of course, he added, we should make sure the dry-cleaning firm didn't use a scent in its chemicals.

During the whole of our conversation, he didn't apologize once. And he didn't offer to cover the dry-cleaning costs.

Pat has just taken it to a family-owned dry-cleaner and laundry that has been in business since the 1970s. The store advertises that it can safely clean delicate fabrics such as wedding dresses and heritage clothing.

After Pat explained the problem to the owner, the woman suggested that instead of dry-cleaning the quilt, she should wash it with a special, scent-free detergent that they used to remove stubborn odours.

Pat agreed, and now we wait.

000

Pat has just come home with the quilt, and it is once again perfect! No scent, no greasy feel. Just a lovely quilt. What's more---it's on the bed!

This quilt is based on an old pattern called 'Grandmother's Garden', which is composed of interlocking hexagons of every colour.  Like a jazz musician, Pat has improvised on the theme, with some of the hexagons connecting while others are floating. She calls it, "This Grandmother's Quilt".

Note the hexagons.

000

What is the point of this rant?

Well, it has been cathartic---I feel better.

And perhaps it will save one of our readers from the problem we fell into. Our advice is that you should be wary about using the cold water detergent that you have trusted for years. Only use a cold water detergent that says in big letters: "Scent-Free".

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See you on April 29, 2012 for Posting #144 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:
In Posting # 8 in The Icewine Guru blog, the Guru gives his prediction on the Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/