SOTD: Tauer Carillon Pour un Ange, and relinquishing the meh

(And this was really the SOTD on Wednesday. Me pre-writing posts? What's with that?)

I bought it too fast.

I loved the sample. Falling-down, won't risk it going away, love. Bought it. Didn't like the first wearing. Went into denial and put it away. A year later, I'm trying it again.

Nope.

Wearing it gives me the same feeling as a glass of iced tea with too much lemon and not enough sugar. I'm not saying that there's any actual lemon--just that there's a sharpness that could be lovely and refreshing if there were enough sugar.

Maybe it's my skin chemistry.

I think that for the next attempt, I'll decant a little into a splash bottle. I tested it unsprayed, after all, so maybe...

I doubt it. The next solution is to give or swap it away, maybe with a few more just-accept-reality bottles. Swapping or selling is, of course thwarted by my Postal Regulation Phobia, so unless I coordinate with a perfume freak to meet in Portland on one of our lately-not-infrequent trips there, it's not all that workable.

I eye the collection for more of those accept-reality bottles. I'm always worried that someday I'll fall in love with something that I've given away. But there's no logic in that; it's a hoarderesque mindset. For one thing I use perfume so lightly that a 5ml decant would last me years, even in the regular rotation.

And, really, it's unlikely that I'll ever fall in love with a perfume for which my reaction is "meh." The ones worth keeping an eye on are the "Oh, my God, does it smell that way on purpose?" bottles.  Those are usually blind buys, which a light sprinkling of classics threatened by reformulation or discontinuation. (My Mitsouko, for example, and No. 5 before I started to appreciate it a little.) The blind buys were either rock-bottom-price discounter products, or things from indie houses that I respect. If I panic and buy something on the verge of discontinuation from an indie house, I figure that even if I don't like it, my money went to someone worthwhile.

Today's additions to the Out box:

Creed's Original Vetiver: Perfectly Nice. A gateway vetiver. Friendly. Nonthreatening. Cuddly. I'm past it. I might have an occasional craving, but I have four (four) (FOUR) ounces in one of those big Creed bottles from a discounter. I'll take a 5ml decant and give the rest away.

Alfred Sung's Sung: This is in the difficult "aldehydic meh" category. Someday I may learn to love aldehydes, and until that day, it's hard to predict which ones I might love. But there are a lot of likelier candidates--No. 5, Climat...OK, my mind blocks memory of aldehydes, but I know there are others. I'm going to let this one go.

Serge Lutens Bas de Soie: Pretty. Also, pretty. Perfectly Nice. And pretty. If Lutens has to produce the occasional Perfectly Pretty Pretty Nice fragrance in order to make enough money needed to bottle the weird, fine. But I'm going to let someone else appreciate it.

Lancome Mille et Une Roses: I have this because I bought that little set of classics, including the aforementioned Climat. I don't like this one, and I have never yet learned to love a rose fragrance that I didn't like at first sniff. It's odd, because I love roses, but maybe that's what makes it not-odd. It's like fried chicken; I'm so attached to the "right" fried chicken that I have no tolerance for the "wrong", the kind with too much pepper or other transgressions.

There will be more.

That is all.

(I didn't bother to link the above perfume names to the posts with the Review Roundup for the perfume. This strikes me as evidence that I am less and less a perfume blog. Is this wrong?)

Ramble: Clutter and hoarding

So, a large part of hoarding is denial.

"I'm not a hoarder, I just don't have enough storage."
"I'm not a hoarder; it's all your stuff!"
"I'm not a hoarder, I just don't have time to get organized."
"It wouldn't be a problem if you people would help out around here! Don't touch that! You don't know where it goes!"
"How can you call me a hoarder; have you seen how many RubberMaid organizers I have?!"

So I like to keep an eye on my collections. My stashes. My hoards. I don't usually call them hoards, but I suppose I like to keep myself from avoiding the word, in case that slides into denial later. To me, these words all signal "excess"--not necessarily evil or irrational excess, but definitely an excess beyond what I need. If I keep reminding myself that, yes, I am storing things that I don't actually need, then I will hopefully remember that if those things get "out of control", that's because I chose not to control them.

I think that's one of the places where hoarding starts to slip off the edge. If you start to feel that you have an obligation to keep the stuff, then you start to think that you no longer have a choice. That sense of obligation can take a lot of forms:

"Auntie June gave me that, and she's dead now!"
"That's a family heirloom; I have to keep it for the kids."
"The kids might want to give those toys to their kids."
"There might be a natural disaster and I'll need that food."
"I spent good money on that; I can't get rid of it."
"We might need to touch up a spot with that paint."
"I might lose my job and need to sew my clothes with that fabric."
"I spent good money on that sewing machine; I have to buy fabric to sew with."
"I neeeeed it!"
"I waaaaaant it!"

I would argue that the vast, vast majority of the time, the reasons come down to the last one--you want it. Even if you don't want that thing because you love it and use it, you may "want" it because you'll feel guilty if you give away Auntie June's last pair of bedroom slippers, and you'd rather keep the thing than feel the guilt. You've converted a preference--the preference to avoid anxiety and guilty--into an obligation. A false obligation.

You want to avoid the bad feelings of admitting to a mistaken purchase. You want to avoid worry about future deprivation by keeping things that might (but probably wouldn't) help with that deprivation. You want to avoid worrying about whether your kids might be mad--or you want to avoid the guilt of keeping so much stuff by attributing that stuff to other people's desires and needs.

You want to avoid bad feelings. So you transform all this avoidance into obligation; you declare that you have no choice. You're taking orders from the stuff. Because, at some level, you want to. The stuff is your shield against bad feelings, and after avoiding those bad feelings all that time, you don't know if you can handle them.

OK, maybe this isn't true of "you". But it is true of a lot of people. They create the illusion that the stuff is out of control when, again, they're choosing not to control it. So I'm trying really hard to choose to control my stuff.

For example, I'm working on eliminating deep storage in favor of open, handy, displayed storage. The majority of my fabric stash lives in two open shelves in my den, where I can gloat over all the colors and textures. The majority of my perfume lives in three bread boxes on another open shelf, lids usually opened for display and gloating.

I did, admittedly, say "the majority". There's some fabric in bins, and some excess perfume here and there. That needs to go. But having most of it in a defined space makes it perfectly, visibly obvious how much I have. And if I refuse to re-overflow the space, it sets a boundary against future acquisition. It's under control.

Other things aren't under control. Boxes of books. Untidy stacks of sweaters. Too many bath potions. A little pool of shoes. They're not goat-trails hoarder chaos, but they're just not satisfactory. They give me that feeling that they're out of control. They're trying to give me orders. That just won't do.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: More Magazines

No, not the same batch a third time. This was a box of back issues of Threads, given to a friend who thought that another friend might have other friends who might want them. If you see what I mean. I hope that they don't end up causing her too much annoyance.

But they're gone! Yay! And just in time, because I like Threads. I selected and kept a dozen, which is plenty for a paging-through-Threads fix, but the boxfull was calling to me all the same.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Sundays and Grudges

My goal this weekend was to keep tidying and decluttering. My success was limited, but there are five boxes of books, one of magazines, and one of clothes, bundled up and ready to go. These don't count as DCOTD material, because they haven't gone yet, but it's still good.

And there are substantial pockets of tidy. I'm particularly pleased with the hall shelves, all nice and neat and organized for use. There's a section for library and borrowed and new books. And another for books waiting to be shelved. And the subset of cooking magazines that we're keeping is organized in month groups--after all, in November you don't care about the recipes from Thanksgiving of 2007; you just want all the Thanksgiving issues. And the popcorn bowl for wallet cards that are rarely used, like the cupcake punch card or the discount card for the bookstore in another state that we may get to a few times a year.

Details, details; what's my point? My point, I think, is that it delights me to have a home that has systems.

See, I grew up in a hoarded home. Oh, it was a mildly hoarded home--it would never never make it through the audition process for either of the Hoarders shows. But an important thing to know about a hoarded home is that it's organized for the convenience of the hoard, not for its occupants, not even for the hoarder. A hoarded home is owned by the stuff. And systems are for people, not stuff. Therefore, we didn't have systems. Most of the closet and bureau and cabinet space in the house was filled with rarely-used junk, and the things that we actually used either had to be shoehorned in and out, or had to find some surface to perch on. Even the refrigerator crisper generally contained more decayed than usable food.

The situation wasn't entirely out of control. When it was no longer possible to put a fresh item in the crisper, it would finally get cleaned out. The junk usually only filled the closets and bureaus, and maybe a thin layer stacked on top or nearby; the piles were low, and there wasn't much overflow onto the floor. But that strikes me as all the stranger. Clearly the situation wasn't one of uncontrollable accumulation. But if it was possible to stop accumulating when all of the storage, plus a bit more, was full of stale unused items, why wasn't it possible to clear some space for items in actual use?

It was as if a home that was arranged in any way for daily life was a little bit distasteful. We crept around the edges of the house, using elements of it rather like a peasant farmer, tasked to maintain an ornamental garden, might surreptitiously grow a few vegetables in a corner somewhere. Concern for our own convenience and comfort would be like eating an ice cream cone in church, except it's not a deity being worshipped, but junk. I find it interesting that my metaphors are about food. Our home didn't feed us. We fed it; we fed it junk, and then we left it in peace and tried not to disturb it as it digested.

The house did let people live there, but grudgingly. Drawers stuck and weren't fixed, handles fell out and weren't replaced, one of the stove burners failed and was never repaired, the bottom of the sink cabinet rotted out and was never renewed. One of the base supports for my dresser fell out of the front right leg regularly, several times a year, and several times a year I took the bottom drawer out and shoved the support back in the leg. It never occurred to me that it could ever actually be fixed. It wouldn't hold any more stuff if it were repaired, it would only be more convenient for the humans, and what did that matter? I remember my puzzlement when a neighbor friend talked me into painting my battered old bedside table; the idea of making a household item prettier and cleaner was a revelation to me.

The rice pot--I've mentioned that rice pot--had no handle on either pot or lid. We used the pot a few times a week, but why should a handle matter? Handles are for people. Closets exist to hold as many hangers and garments as possible; the people who might want to use a tiny subset of those garments are just there on tolerance. I maintained a running battle against my room, organizing the junk into the drawers and closet and making the room look civilized for a brief moment, only to have it revert to chaos again in days. It never occurred to me to keep less junk; that would, again, just make the room more convenient for me.

I'm casting all of the issues with my childhood home as being about hoarding; I know that there were other issues, there were relationship issues, there were two adults who were too unhappy with their lives to do anything about the stage on which those lives were acted out. I sometimes wonder if I'm just nursing petty grievances.

I do feel grievances. I couldn't dream of having a school friend over to the house. My parents never, ever had people over; I reached a pretty advanced age before I realized that adults had friends. We were so isolated that I was well into my school years before I was able to speak to a stranger to order my food at a restaurant; for years, my parents had to order for me. That fact apparently didn't worry them. Neither did the fact that, aside from a neighbor or two, no friends visited my home or invited me to visit theirs. I often wonder; should it have worried them?

But I had heat, functioning plumbing, clean clothes, and safe food. It was possible to find a flat surface to do homework on. By the standards of the average life of a child of a hoarder, I was in heaven. Sometimes I think I should be grateful; sometimes I think I should be furious.

Image: By Christina. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Books

Dang.

It turns out that Wednesday's box of fancy gardening magazines wasn't taken from the driveway, it was rescued by the neighbors when it looked like it was going to rain. However, they're not re-entering the house; I'll toss them in paper recycling before that happens.

Meanwhile, a friend took a dozen of the outgoing books Thursday, so, woohoo!

Friday, er, nothing went away. Hey, that's not true; another friend took one more book. So there.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Magazines

I just cleaned the kitchen. The counter was full of groceries, so I took the canisters out of the cabinet, on the theory that canisters are tidier on the counter than miscellaneous boxes and cans.

Then I found the groceries in the backpack. Now the counter is full of groceries again. Also, the toilet paper is stacked on top of the Swiffers, and the paper towels are on the boxes of straws. A sixpack of cider is on the floor because the fridge and the shelves are full.

I need to accelerate the decluttering. So I'm moving the old Declutter Of The Day posts from that abandoned blog to this one. (That is, I'll be entering new DCOTD posts here.) The rules are that a DCOTD is something that left the house. Not something sorted and boxed and ready to go, not something listed on Freecycle, not even something on the driveway with a free sign or in the trunk waiting for the next trip to the GoodWill. It has to be Gone, irretrievable, never to be seen again.

So today's DCOTD is a file box full of garden magazines that someone took off the Free end of the driveway. Yay!

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: The Moratorium, Shopping, and My Brain

In February, I started the Perfume Moratorium. I was worried that my perfume experience was being consumed by the shopping end of the hobby--pricing, budgeting, filling and clearing online shopping carts. Dithering over buy decisions--is Heeley Cardinal redundant with Serge Noire? If I buy Din Dan will I have too many citrus perfumes? Would buying Tihota be grounds for having me committed? And budgeting decisions; I made the "one bottle per quarter" rule and promptly "borrowed" up to... is it just 2012?

I wanted to take the buying option off the table. I imagined six months of happy nibbling at the collection. I would wear neglected scents for days on end, and really get to know them. Empty vials would pile up as I worked through the sample backlog, savoring each scent without worrying about remembering them for a buying decision. My reviews would be uncontaminated with purchase dithering or budget whining. It would be a commerce-free creative scentopia!

Yeah. Not so much. I slacked off on the SOTD posts. I stopped reviewing perfume. My sample box went unopened for weeks at a time. I abandoned Basenotes. I kept reading perfume blogs, but mostly just to keep up with the bloggers' lives, rather than their perfumes. I stopped regularly wearing perfume.

And I didn't just stop perfume blogging. I slacked off on garden blogging, too. The fiction vignettes petered out. The random babbling about chocolate and fried things slowed down. My film festival posts were less extensive enthusiastic than last year. For a while, I wasn't doing much reading. My plant breeding and selection plans came to nothing.

Now, you could argue that all of that suggests a general lapse of creativity, maybe a low-key depression. That would make sense. But I don't think it's true. It feels as if perfume purchasing, perfume interest, and then all aspects of creativity, fell one after another like a series of dominoes.

And then the moratorium ended--I didn't buy much perfume, but the option to buy returned. And I started reading more. And posting more. And my interested in the garden perked up. And I started wearing more perfume. And I can feel the reviews bubbling up. All the dominoes popped back up, like Weebles.

My creative enthusiasms have always waxed and waned in bursts, triggered by nothing identifiable. For a few weeks or months I'm interested in everything, and then for a few more I'm interested in nothing at all. I don't like it, not one bit; I hate the "off" periods.

I demand an explanation. Or at least a theory.

So I Googled.

I found more than one article that assured me that shopping produces dopamine--and (bonus!) endorphins. Seeing something new and novel, finding a bargain, anticipating hunting down some new possession and dragging it home to the cave, feeds your reward center. That may be how shopping addiction happens. It's probably also behind the acquisition side of hoarding. Sadly for the shopping addicts and the hoarders, it's the anticipation that gives you the high--actually getting the item back to the cave does you no good at all.

Have I mentioned that I think that I have ADHD? Have I mentioned that ADHD is said to be a defect in the brain's reward center? And I've definitely mentioned that I have hoarder genes. I think that it's not entirely whacky to theorize that my brain might be particularly sensitive to dopamine levels.

And, of course, dopamine and endorphins are also associated with creativity.

So... you see the puzzle pieces of the theory? By declaring the moratorium, did I cut myself off from a highly effective method of self-medication? When I browse through LuckyScent et al with at least the possibility of making a purchase, does that feed my brain things that it needs?

Wait. Wait a minute. I just said this. I just said this. Five posts ago, I said "I have a hoarder id, and sometimes I need to feed it..."

That post and this post are saying the same thing, aren't they? Sure, that one was about bribing my brain so that it doesn't turn me into a hoarder, and this one is about feeding it for creativity, but it's the same food, and the same howling brain, isn't it?

Huh.

First Image: By Debbie Mc. Wikimedia Commons.
Second Image: By Quatar&Me. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Decluttering and taking candy away from my id

So, we did some decluttering today. Mainly, we dug into the bookshelves and ended up with stacks and stacks of books to sell to the used bookstore--I'd quickly estimate a couple of hundred. Added to that is a foot-high stack of old Threads magazines to give away, if I can persuade someone to value them as much as I used to. The same for several dozen issues of Fine Gardening, though those are just going to spend an afternoon at the foot of the driveway with a Free sign, and will end up in paper recycling if no one takes them. There's also a boxful of assorted magazines not worth trying to find a home for; they're going straight into paper recycling as soon as I work up the energy to go outdoors.

That's after several boxes of clothes that went to the Good Will a week or three ago. Oh, and a large armchair donated to an organization that had a place to use it.

In the garage are two bins of assorted cables and power cords, and at least one more box of books, and two or three boxes of stuff that we intended for a garage sale but might just give away, now that we're past garage sale weather. In other words, stuff is leaving.

But I'm still not satisfied. I want to get the whole house down to a neat, sparse, minimalist level Right Now This Very Minute If Not Sooner Please! And then I want to be done. I need to accept the reality that it doesn't work that way. Two of the decluttering lessons that I never quite seem to absorb are (1) if it took decades to acquire, you can't get rid of it in a day and (2) decluttered never stays decluttered. The only way to keep a house in reliably good shape is to keep stuff flowing out the door, every single day, or at least every single week.

I also continue to deny facts about myself and my Stuff habits. For example, I buy books like magazines. Oh, not all the time, but there are times, especially when I'm traveling and have no access to a library, that I buy a book because I need want something to play with and cheer me up right now. And then I deny that this is what I've done, because it seems like such an unforgivably wasteful thing to do.

If I go all logical, I can tell myself that it's not that bad. A softback book often costs less than going to a movie (and having a Coke and popcorn), and it generally provides more than two hours' worth of entertainment. If I look for more examples in the travelling context where many of these books are purchased, the book is often cheaper than even one drink from Room Service.

What I need to accept is that it's entirely possible for me to buy even a cooking or sewing or gardening book (reference books that I'd normally expect to keep permanently), play with it for a few hours, and then lose interest in it within the month. At which point I should give or sell it away rather than letting it sit around gathering dust in the hope that I'll get my money's worth out of it. I already got my money's worth, when it made me happy on a stressful trip. There's no point in trying to make it work overtime.

I may have mentioned that, years ago, I used to do the same thing with Playmobils. You know Playmobils? Those happy friendly little dolls and all the places and things that you can buy for them? Some of them are oddly frightening places and things, for a children's toy. I'm used to kids playing with guns and monsters, but an ambulance complete with a prostrate (but still smiling) Playmobil child on a stretcher, complete with an IV? Meep.

Anyway, I love Playmobils, and I most love unpacking them and putting all the little pieces together. Once that's done, much of the charm is gone. Years ago, after a bad day at work, I'd sometimes drive to the hobby shop and buy a smallish Playmobil toy, take it home, unwrap and assemble it, and pose it on a shelf somewhere. And then ignore it for the subsequent decade. I finally gave them all away (Didn't I? Is there still a bookboxfull somewhere?), but it's relatively recently that I realized that those Playmobils earned their keep in the first day of ownership, and there was no logical reason to hang on to them rather than passing them on to someone who would proceed to pass them on to small children. To me, a Playmobil is like a cocktail, only cheaper; it improves my mood for an hour, and then it's used up.

Now, I'm not writing this post to advocate the purchase of durable or semi-durable goods, only to treat them as extremely temporary entertainments. But I think that it is important for me to acknowledge it when, despite good intentions, I do exactly that. One thing worse than a disposable culture is a disposable culture that refuses to dispose.

As I've said many times on this blog, I have hoarder genes. I have a hoarder id, and sometimes I need to feed it books with pretty pictures, or brightly colored socks, or that Playmobil desert kit with the vulture (Always wanted that one! Why haven't I bought it?), or a bottle of perfume that was less than carefully considered. If I don't give it a snack now and then, it's likely to lock the ego in the closet and leave the superego whining ineffectually in the middle of the set of Hoarders.

Or something. You see what I mean? My strategy, unstated until now, is apparently to feed the id, wait until it's looking the other way, then box up its toys and send them to charity. It's not the most efficient strategy, but it seems to keep things under control.

Picture of Playmobil hot dog vendor: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Decluttering and the whacky

The house is a mess.

Now, it's not the same kind of mess that our house used to be years ago, or the same kind of mess that my mother's house was when I was a child. I know this, because we expected guests at 6:00 yesterday evening, and I didn't start the frantic cleaning process until 5:00. Several years ago, guests would have called for a day's notice or more. At Mom's house... well, let's just not think about it.

However, when guest preparation involves making sure that I close more than a certain minimum number of doors, that means that the house is a mess.

I'm discovering that the house being a mess is a useful thing. I scanned a stack of twenty-four sewing and craft books, a stack that I considered to be the hard-core remainder of my sewing collection, after multiple thinnings. But, driven by the mess, I thought I'd have one more look at them and see if I can find one or two to put in the "sell to the used bookstore" stack.

I found nineteen.

It's clear that my customary strategy of, "Let's get this place tidied, and then let's do some decluttering" is flawed. This weekend's plan is declutter first, tidy second.

Drifting to another angle on the same topic, I've mentioned that I worry a lot, right? About everything. And my worries have an irrational tendency to make me doubt what I'm doing. I think thoughts like:

• "If I get hit in the next round of layoffs, I'll be sorry I spent money on this hot chocolate."
• "If I do something bad and get sued and go bankrupt, I'll be sorry I didn't buy every perfume I wanted beforehand. They probably wouldn't count as a seizable asset."
• "If I get bad medical news at my next physical and promptly die, I'll feel silly that I had such a good time today."

Yes, I see the fourteen dozen different ways that these--especially the last one--make no sense whatsoever. But my point is that yesterday, I realized that there is no scenario where decluttering doesn't look like a good idea to me. If I get fired? It'd be great to have a cleaner house to update my resume in. If I get sick and promptly die, it'll be great to have all my stuff neatened and dealt with. If I accidentally do something really bad and get arrested... well, OK, there's no particular advantage to having a clean house, but there's no down side either. And, of course, if the world continues on its normal track, it'd be nice to have it continue with a tidy house.

A chunk of badness landed today--something happening to someone else, not me or Himself, but badness all the same. Decluttering tomorrow will be good.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: Hermes, The Ziploc, and Decluttering Weakness

Yesterday, I read a Basenotes thread "What house(s) do you collect?", so I went through my Basenotes wardrobe out of curiosity. I wasn't the least bit surprised to find Parfumerie Generale and Serge Lutens amply represented, but I definitely didn't expect to learn that Hermes is one of the top three in my collection. That's not to say that I disapprove of Hermes or anything like that, but I didn't think that liked them all that much.

So I had to go through the list of Hermes fragrances that my wardrobe claims I own. Hiris, sure, I love that. Oh, yeah, I bought a Discovery Set from Hermes plus a couple of stray Discovery Set bottles from The Perfumed Court; that should show all those other houses that tiny bottles can inspire purchases from other-than-favorite houses. Eau d'Orange Verte, didn't I give that away? And Terre d'Hermes, too? So I went to look at the actual collection, and, yes, no Eau d'Orange Verte, no Terre d'Hermes.

That was when I made my mistake: I went to look at The Ziploc.

The Ziploc is a gallon ziploc crammed full of fragrances that I plan to give, sell, or swap away. (Probably give, locally; Postal Regulation Phobia continues to rule.) It's the product of much decluttering heartstrain. Actually looking at The Ziploc, rather than stuffing a rejected fragrance in with eyes averted and running away again, is a mistake.

This is because The Ziploc makes me go "Ooh!" and then fragrances come out and then I spray on things that I had firmly given up, like Creed Original Vetiver, and then all that decluttering is in danger of going out the window. I smell strongly of Original Vetiver right now. If I've got my terminology right, my superego filled The Ziploc; my id ("Pretty! Smells good! MINE!") wants to retrieve everything from it.

It's all the more dangerous because we moved and combined our households and therefore all of my Perfume Breadboxes are in one place, and it was the crowding of the Breadboxes that made me declutter in the first place. You'd think, of course, that the Breadboxes would be just as full even though they're reunited, but that's not true - two homes meant bottles in one place and decants drawn from the bottles in another, and I boxed up the decants and that means that Breadbox Real Estate is freed up.

Bwahaha.

So I'm eyeing the Ziploc and questioning my decisions. For example, why is Mandragore in there? I love Mandragore! Could I possibly have decided to get rid of it on the flimsy grounds that I haven't worn it in three years? Unthinkable! It's going on the "maybe" shelf.

Then there's Coty Wild Musk... OK, I can give up Coty Wild Musk. I bought it for the Drugstore Series, and, no, I'm not going to answer to the part of my brain that's asking, "But did you review that one? Shouldn't you hang on to it until you do?" No. Just no. Goodbye, Wild Musk.

Demeter Dirt?! I love Demeter Dirt! How could...

Oh. Yes, I love some of Christopher Brosius's current dirt renditions more. That must be the reason. Back in the Ziploc with you.

Fresh Lemon Sugar. I loved that. I lift the cap and I still love it. I suspect that it went into the Ziploc based on snobbery ("Too sweet. Teenager fragrance.") and citrus overload. But I'm pretty sure I still love it. It's going to a Breadbox. If and when I buy Din Dan, Lemon Sugar may go away.

Sand & Sable. Drugstore series again. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed writing the review, I enjoyed the comments conversation that ensued. I never ever wear it, because there are heavy white flowers that I like better. Pass on the enjoyment to someone else. Do you hear me, Id? Back in the Ziploc. Back!

ElizabethW Sweet Tea. It was once my very, very favorite. I never wear it any more. I can't look in Sweet Tea's sad eyes as I put her back in the Ziploc; she's going in "maybe" until I'm stronger.

Kiehl's Pear 1977. (Why 1977?) A nice pear and nothing but pear. I enjoy it but it's so simple that I will never wear it. I reassure myself that perfumers will keep on making pear notes, and put it back in the Ziploc.

Eau d'Orange Verte. Its appeal is based purely on "But Hermes makes good fragrances!" and "But I paid money for it!" Not enough. Ziploc. It's a relief that I apparently already got rid of Terre d'Hermes; it has much more snob appeal for me, and I might be unable to resist it today.

Fresh Hesperides. I loved it once, but never bonded with it like I did with Sweet Tea, and it smells aggressively synthetic to me now. It's going back without a qualm.

L'Occitane Bergamot Tea. That makes the Mandragore eviction all the more puzzling; that was my other bergamot fragrance. But if I'm keeping Mandragore I don't need Bergamot Tea; off with it.

Y'know, I have a new theory about Mandragore: I suspect that I was going to buy a real bottle to replace my existing mini, and then the bottle got outprioritized. I'm telling myself that anyway, because it makes keeping the mini a sensible deicison that saves a bottle purchase, rather than a decluttering weakness. Yeah, that's my story.

A "spare" Vetiver Tonka. At just 15ml of fragrance per Discovery Set bottle, I'm reclaiming that. But it reminds me of why I got rid of Original Vetiver -- for me, there are no circumstances under which Vetiver Tonka doesn't beat out Original Vetiver for the SOTD decision. So the giant green Creed bottle goes back in the Ziploc.

And that strengthens my decision to keep Love in Black in the Ziploc - I can maintain my prejudice against Creed that way. Sure, yes, Creed has some nice scents, and I really like the Creed reps I've met. But all the people running around insisting that Creed uses All Natural Materials Woo Hoo! annoy me, and so does the advertising copy that feeds that impression. And I feel no obligation to be rational and unprejudiced about luxury products.

Jo Malone Sweet Lime and Cedar. Smells lovely at first, and then on my skin the lime grows and grows and grows until I want to saw my arm off. Best to get rid of it, to resist the temptation to try it just one more time.

Rochas Tocade. I adore the circus-colors bottle. The scent itself is a "comfort" rose, but I don't like roses enough to want them in my comfort scent, so it has no function for me. Back in the Ziploc. Back. I said back. Look, Id, you can get a picture of the pretty bottle, OK? That's better; thank you.

The bottom of The Ziploc is full of decants and samples; I refuse to look at those. If I don't even see them until I dump The Ziploc out and tell friends, "Take something!" then I'll feel bad saying, "Oh, I changed my mind about that one; give it back." Of course, my friend are polite enough to undermine that by repeatedly asking, "Are you sure you want to give it away?" but I'll tell myself that they'd be furious if I said no. Decluttering calls for mental guerilla warfare.

Image: By H. Zell. Wikimedia Commons.
(What does it have to do with the post? Nothing whatsoever. It was just pretty.)

Link: Declutter Of The Day, and that Wordpress Thing

So, I noticed, during the film festival, that Himself was doing a lot of fine WordPress blogging from his phone. I was jealous--I'm unable to do that with Blogspot.

So I've decided to give Wordpress a try, and the logical blog to migrate was the one that I've neglected into nonexistence--poor old Declutter Of The Day. So DCOTD has restarted on Wordpress, and I wanted to offer a pointer here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: We're Home! And Decluttering.

So, we've been busy. Very busy. Not in a bad way; actually, in a very good way.

See, for years we've been living in two places, the Place Near Employers, and the House We Want To Call Home. For obvious reasons, we had to spend a fair bit of time in the Place Near Employers. But recently, our Employers have agreed that, OK, we can live in the House and use the wonders of modern technology to communicate with them.

Woohoo!

So we moved. Not just ourselves, but our stuff. All our stuff. Well, not absolutely all--we called the Salvation Army, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and like that.  But there was plenty left for the movers. And plenty moved to the House. And even more moved to a storage space that we will have fee-free access to until October.

And we don't want all that stuff in the House, because then the House would not be pretty. So before October, there will be garage sales, and donation runs, and recycling runs, and heaps of stuff under a "free" sign at the end of the driveway, and a certain amount of eBaying, and Craigslisting, and, well, in general, we'll be paying the penalty for far too many instances of "Why haul it back and forth? Let's just get another one."

But that's fine. We're home.

Ramble: Books and E-Books

Is all this cross-linking between my blogs bad? So often, I have a post that seems to belong in either one.

Well, anyway, a link to a ramble about e-books and a little bit about what I've been reading lately, on the other blog.

Image: By Andreas Praefcke. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Just Looking

You  may have noticed that my posts lately have been abut buy, buy, buy perfume. Not that I'm actually buying anything these last few weeks, but every post is obsessed with whether it would fit in the collection, whether it's redundant, whether it would be wrong to buy it, blah blah blah.

This is rather like my tendency, when eating something new and delicious and deceptively simple at a restaurant, to say, "We really have to cook more." With the implication that if we did cook more, we'd imitate the dish that we're enjoying and thereby have access to it forever. And my tendency, while admiring a neighbor's (for example) daylilies, to immediately rethink my decision not to grow any daylilies myself.

It should be possible to enjoy a fine thing without immediately focusing on having control and possession of that thing. That focus suddenly looks to me like a hoarder's mindset. And there are hoarder genes in my DNA that I want to squash very, very flat. I've decided that I want to cut this out.

So what does that mean? As I write this post, it means that I'm considering buying no perfume for quite a long time. A long time by my standards, that is. Six months, maybe?

So if I were to do this, what would the rules be? I can think of a few :

• I'm allowed to repurchase what I use up. This will only be meaningful for soap and shampoo and bath potions, though if I unexpectedly use up a bottle or decant of a perfume, yes, I am allowed to replace it. This particular exercise is not about divesting, though it could well be accompanied by other exercises that are.
• I'm allowed to buy 1ml or 2ml samples. If the philosophy is to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of life without taking permanent possession of them, a 1ml perfume sample seems like a fine example of exactly that philosophy.
• No decants. No bottles. No excuses. No "But it's a sale." No "But I heard a rumor that it's being discontinued." No "But I already decided I wanted this before I made the rule." No "But it's vintage and it'll be gone." No "But I want to encourage local perfume sellers." No "But I'll buy it as soon as the rule is over, and it's on sale, so I may as well." No "But it's windfall money." Nope nope nope.

Now, I should make it clear that I'm just thinking about this. I'm writing up the rules and eyeing them, cautiously, from a distance. But I think it's a good plan.

Image: Wikimedia Commons. Click for credits.

SOTD: Eau D'Italie Paestum Rose (The Decluttering Resumes)

Yet another perfume purchased without a proper sampling cycle, yet another perfume that I'm likely to give away.

I like this one better than most roses mixed with incense or bitter notes, but it just doesn't have a niche. If I want incense, there's Serge Lutens Serge Noire, and if there weren't, I'd buy Comme des Garcons Kyoto. If I want a rose, there was Elizabeth W Rose and Hermessence Rose Ikebana and Rochas Tocade, and now there's Shiseido White Rose and all other roses can just run along.

So Paestum Rose is nice, it's interesting, it's high-quality, and I can't imagine why I'd wear it. I may give it one more try, but I think it's on its way out of the house.

Image: By Veshi.

SOTD: Rochas Tocade

I've never understood the appeal of Rochas Tocade. Luca Turin loves it. Everyone else seems to love it. And it's inexpensive, so I bought a bottle unsniffed, and was disappointed - in everything but the whacky bottle itself, which I love. Today, I sprayed lots on with the expectation that I would add Tocade to the giveaway list.

Maybe overspraying was the key to success. On previous wearings, I smelled this as uninviting synthetic rose, fading to nonspecific "Yeah, there's still some perfume there" basenotes. This time, the dubious rose was veiled by better things - I got more of the vanilla, and something else that might be the magnolia and lily of the valley. As the flowers faded to the background, the end was musky powder, something that I normally hate, but not this time. Maybe the overspray gave me enough patchouli and cedar to reconcile me to powder, just as the coconut and sandalwood in Cadjmere lead me to love the powder in that fragrance.

So I'm declaring it to be a powder-musk-wood fragrance, not a rose scent. Using that definition, I enjoyed the last few hours, and I can imagine that with a few more wearings, I could grow fond of this. So I'm keeping it. And I still love that bottle.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: By JM Suarez. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: L'Artisan Parfumeur Mure et Musc Extreme (The decluttering continues.)

I love blackberry. And black currant. And black cherry. And black raspberry. All of those fruits and fruit flavors with that extra, dark, slightly winy edge that isn't sour, isn't bitter, but still balances syrupy sweetness as if it were. I often dump extra water into over-sweet lemonade and other fruit drinks; I never think that a good blackberry drink is too sweet. I suspect that I could sip the syrup straight.

So I had big hopes for Mure et Musc. So I, once again, didn't finish a decant before buying a bottle. And now I'm considering a declutter.

This is a relatively new bottle - perhaps two years old. It's adequate.  Today I sprayed it on lavishly by my standards - five or six sprays, well away from my nose to avoid temporary anosmia - and once in a while throughout the day I could get a faint hint of it. A little blackberry, a little fizz, a little of something vaguely fresh. It's like a blackberry Italian soda purchased from that alarmingly health-sensitive lunch place that's stingy with the syrup - mostly mineral freshness, barely any fruit. I once tried a sample of the non-Extreme version, and was even less impressed.

I'm told that the vintage Mure et Musc with the fruity musk is the real stuff, though I still have trouble using the word "vintage" for something produced in the seventies and eighties. Luca Turin refers to the original as having "tremendous radiance and transparency", and laments the later reformulation. So I feel vindicated in being unimpressed with the current versions.

I think that I'm going to give it away and give Annick Goutal Eau de Charlotte a try.

Review Roundup (I'm including reviews of all versions, not just the Extreme): Bois de Jasmin and Bois de Jasmin again (a brief mention about the musk) and Now Smell This and Sweet Diva and Grain de Musc and Aromascope (brief mention) and Aromascope again (another brief mention) and Perfume Posse and PeredePierre and Fragrantica and Basenotes and Pink Manhattan.

Image: By De-Okin. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Creed Love In Black

Apparently I'm doing Fall Cleaning, because yet again I wore a scent with the intention of confirming that I don't like it. And, yep, it's confirmed. I once liked Love In Black - I bought a bottle, and I didn't buy it unsniffed. But I did buy it without working my way through even a small decant, and therefore the regret is predictable.

I thought that my occasional halfhearted reaction post-purchase was due to the iris. Since I've learned to love iris in several forms since the last time I wore Love In Black, I was hoping for a turnaround on this fragrance. But the reverse happened - I learned to love iris in concert with incense and leather and galbanum and generally dark or threatening things. Violets? Nooooo. I could tolerate violets with the scent of pencil erasers - that was pleasantly amusing. Now that I know that those pencil erasers are iris, it's all over.

Yes, I realize that it's love in black, and therefore maybe it thinks it's dark, but I don't. It's bright and sweet and the fact that it's a little sad doesn't help. Reference decant, bottle leaving.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Fragrance Bouquet and MakeupAlley and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Basenotes and Sniffapalooza and The Scented Salamander and I Smell Therefore I Am and Fragrantica and PeredePierre and Scent of the Day.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Diptyque Philosykos

Everybody likes Philosykos. Except for me.  It's been described as smelling like the whole fig grove, with green or leafy or woody or forest-floor notes in addition to the smell of the fruit. Nearly everyone makes a point of its lack of excess sweetness. Some say that it's challenging or a little sharp, but they always say it in a positive way.

My experience is  "Sweet. Oh, and there's some coconut. There might be fig in there, too. And did I mention, sweet?" I get absolutely no green, no sharpness, no wood. To me, it smells as if I had scooped out a slightly overripe fig (to avoid the slightly greener taste of the outer flesh), doused  the inner flesh with coconut milk, and sprinkled it with sugar. Nice for one bite, but not something that you'd want to smell all day.

It's unlikely that I'm right and everyone else is wrong. I must assume, then, that I'm anosmic to something essential in this fragrance. I wore it this one last time to confirm that my feelings hadn't changed; they haven't, so I'll be taking a small reference decant, and the bottle will be leaving.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Now Smell This again and The Non-Blonde and Sweet Diva and Perfume Posse and MakeupAlley and My Perfume Life and Basenotes and Fragrantica and A Rose Beyond The Thames and Badger & Blade and sakecat and EauMG and The Left Coast Nose (scroll down) and hesmellsshesmells and Polish, Platforms, Perfume and MossyLoomings (for the solid) and MossyLoomings again and I Smell Therefore I Am and parfumieren and Scent Of The Day  and Undina's Looking Glass.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Creed Original Vetiver

I have a four (four) ounce bottle of Creed Original Vetiver.

I only wanted one ounce - or, really half an ounce - but several months ago the trustworthy seller offering both a coupon and a sale only had the big bottle, so I paid less for four ounces with box and cap than I would have paid for a small tester without either. So there it is, looming threateningly over the nice little bottle of Love In Black, sneering at me and holding more perfume than I will ever use.

It bothers me. It's that whole anti-hoarding thing. It feels like a slippery slope. I want the smallest possible bottle.

So today I'm wearing Original Vetiver, frankly in the hope that I'll find that I no longer like it, so I can give it away. That's going fairly well so far - it's pleasant and green, but I'm finding it too one-dimensional and too masculine, and wishing that I were wearing Vetiver Tonka instead. And my Vetiver Tonka is properly anti-hoarding - it's one of the tiny Discovery Set bottles.

So what to do? Give away three one-ounce decants and keep the original bottle? Keep a one-ounce decant and give away the bottle? Give the whole thing away and make Vetiver Tonka my chosen vetiver?

Decisions, decisions.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Julien Bertrand. Wikimedia Commons.