The recipe for fragrance soup:
20+ products sitting under your bathroom sink
x 20+ unlisted ingredients per “fragrance” in the ingredient list
= 400+ unknown chemicals stewing under your nose as you brush your teeth every morning
Don’t feed the bears. Don’t breathe fragrance soup.
I don’t know any other way to describe the scent of fragrance soup than the feeling of breathing in a headache. A few weeks ago I took every fragranced product out of my bathroom. Anything that had the word “fragrance” listed on the ingredients list. I tossed 90% of the expired products that I no longer used but still felt were valuable since they were expensive to purchase in the first place and tossed them in the trash. I took the other 10% that were not expired and I in theory still wanted to use some day after this experiment, and put them in a box in the garage to clear the air and give my bathroom (and myself) a chance to breathe.
A week ago I needed my travel bag (a ziplock bag I always keep for going places full of a toothbrush, razor, hair clip, etc) and realized I’d put it in my box in the garage. When I opened the box I kid you not it felt like a wave of fragrance soup hit me in the face. I could feel my sinuses filling with what felt like poison the way I could feel steam going in my nose. The headache hit instantly and I closed the lid as quick as I could.
As I took that plastic ziplock out of the garage and back to my bathroom I couldn’t kick the smell. My fingers smelled like fragrance soup, the bag smelled like fragrance soup, and as I put the bag in my bathroom I could feel the scent filling the air. After putting that ziplock in the trash and getting a fresh one, the scent still lingered. How is that possible?! What is in these “beauty” products that sticks like sludge to our pores, clothes and the air we’re breathing?
I know there is a ton of research out there, I came about the notion of taking all fragrances out of our house from Branch Basics in an attempt at giving my son’s body room to heal his eczema, but I didn’t think I’d be able to physically feel the weight of the fragrance that had been filling our house.
Also side note, after clearing out the fragrances now, if I use a fragranced lotion and wear one pair of clothes and then do the laundry, my entire load of laundry then smells of that fragrance even after it’s been washed and dried and that fragrance wafts through the laundry room.
The weight of fragrance soup in my sinuses must’ve been so full that I couldn’t discern the load it was carrying. Now that the soup has cleared and the air must be a little lighter, the toxic fragrance smell is easier to detect and honestly not appealing.
All this with a side note that I LOVE fragrances. I’ve mentioned this before when I removed all candles (except 100% pure beeswax candles), but I truly adore fragrances and their nuances and storytelling and nostalgia and overall magic they’re able to bottle. But why does this dreamy ingredient of “fragrance” after being removed for a time create a physical negative reaction in my body? I honestly wish it didn’t! I want to keep it around, but not at a cost. I also miss fragrance. I love wearing perfume and smelling nice and picking a scent to match my mood or outfit or occasion. I don't think I'll keep our house this 'fragrance free' forever, but I'm not sure what it will look like when (big prayers) my son's eczema hopefully does clear one day and we reintroduce some of the more natural fragrances back into our home.
Packing up all of my products stung a little less the second time around, but replacing makeup and body products with fragrance free options has been more difficult than it was with candles and cleaning. With candles I took all out and replaced with one type - 100% beeswax. I’ll be honest, the lack of variety isn’t as exciting but it was “easy” to solve. With cleaners I took all out and replaced with one type - Branch Basics. Not quite as effective as the multitudes of chemicals (but let me tell you cleaning product soup and the box I kept in the garage smells wayyy worse than fragrance soup from cosmetics) but also an “easy” solution. However, finding a replacement for every product that I put in, on and around my body has proved to be much more of a puzzle.
I’ll save the current pieces I’ve replaced and ones I’m still procuring for another day, but it has not been as simple as I’d hoped. Fragrance free products do not feel nearly as desirable or fancy or fun, and often times do not work as well on me. My deodorant seems to not be quite enough, my feminine care products (yep even those too) have been quite a learning curve, my makeup is honestly lame in packaging and not really performing and my lotion is a work in progress (but one that I’m so excited to share!). I know truly good, truly clean products are out there, but they are few and far between and seldom as good as the fragrance soup alternative.
I love inventing, and I’m taking this frustration with my options and dreaming up what I wish was available right now to fill my vanity with a few edited products that do not decompose into fragrance soup.
xx
Aubree