The NY Times writes today about the explosion of the home fragrance market, the air fresheners, candles, sprays, rocks, sticks and even Elton John branded smells that consumers are crazy for.

Marcel Proust wrote:

“But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”

What smells good to me? Ivory soap, Tide Detergent, Downy fabric softener, Safeguard, Murphy’s Oil Soap and Pine Sol. If a house is dirty, sprinkling artificial vanilla into the carpeting and lighting $2.49 Glade lemon candles won’t clean it up.

But there are the glorious memories of smells that stick with me: Evelyn Marx’s Guerlain perfuming her Lincolnwood ranch house; the first bottle of English Leather I purchased for $6.00 that I wore the night I lost my virginity; the freshly laundered shirts from the Chinese owned dry cleaner on Touhy in Chicago; the old bar of Cashmere Bouquet soap that sat in Bubby’s bathtub for years; the cold January air that blew across Lake Michigan and over Aunt Millie’s house in Glencoe; and the first May night I spent in the new house in Woodcliff Lake, NJ surrounded by enormous trees and singing crickets.