It was just before my 61st birthday when I started to notice that “old lady” smell. The distressing thing was that it seemed to be me.
You know when you’re out camping and you wake up to yesterday’s sweaty shirt, only now it’s damp in the coolness of morning? That smell.
As I’m getting ready for work, I sniff everything before I put it on. I used to be able to wear a bra for more than one day.
Wait — I’m not the only one who does that, am I? Anyway, I don’t now. My bra always has the damp camping sweatshirt smell and needs to be laundered every single wearing.
This may raise the unsavoury question of whether I would wear panties for more than one day — trust me, NO. I always have fresh panties every day, and since I don’t really like doing laundry, I have a great stack of them so I never run out of clean ones. My mother raised me right — put the fear of God in me that if I was in an accident, how would it look to have dirty underwear? Now I’ll need to win the lottery to buy enough bras to have a matching stack so I can go back to doing laundry when I feel like it.
So, bra in laundry, I still smell it — the old lady smell. Have I actually managed to cross that line in my 60th year? Maybe it’s my place. It was once a mess of papers and dust, of dust on electronics, warm, and of dishes in the sink. You’d think I could keep up being one person but it seems I enjoyed the chaos somehow. Now I’ve changed all that.
Because insanity by definition is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results — this from Einstein, I believe, so who could argue? I am determined to do things differently.
To that end I hired, for a few hours each week, for several weeks, a lovely young lady to help me clean and clear. A lot went out the door. What’s left is clean. Even had the carpets cleaned. And still I can smell it. The old lady smell remains.
I smell it on myself right now. When I sniff each piece of clothing, they smell all right, but still I smell it. It’s in the air. Is it wafting off my skin, or what?
I am sure this is why old ladies wear such strong perfume. I’m convinced that it is worn to change what fills their nostrils from old lady smell to something that reminds them of the fields of daisies they pranced in their youth.
To passers-by, it smells like old lady covered in a thick cloud of perfume. I know that, and yet I’ve been thinking about looking for a new perfume.
I am unable to do so living here on the west coast. Everyone is allergic to everything. Breathing the blossom-filled air year round is more than enough to block nasal passages, thank you. No one needs the extra challenge of breathing in various artificial perfumes.
There will be no wearing of scents, and in fact, please wear unscented underarm deodorant and hair spray too.
Do I embrace my old lady smell? For now it seems my only choice. With laundry done and everything clean I was sure it would subside. But no. I’m distressed about it. Surely I don’t have to have old lady smell for the rest of my days. That won’t do in Hollywood!
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I worked where you work and I stood close enough to you, and I always thought you smelled fine. I am over 60 and I think I smell fine. You must be imagining this because someone may have told you that once you’re no longer fresh “as a daisy”, you must smell bad. Or you remember your sick grandma, who was really old, and she smelled musty. Or her home smelled musty. But that’s just stale dust. Once people get old, it seems that they don’t deep clean regularly-and it smells odd, old, and musty. I really don’t think that is the case in your case. Like I said, I think I smell divine. All it takes is a shower and a fresh smelling body lotion. Just change your thinking because you’ll just become obsessed with sniffing yourself and everything that touches your skin. That is not the way to life your best life. Relax already:) 🙂 Good luck with your move.
Well said Paulette.