What's that smell? Freshness? Hardly!

Since we recently had to close our storefront in Halifax, I recently went back to work. Making real money again. I sort of forgot what it was. For those of you not aware (but I did reference it in my introduction, here), I am a geologist. The big downside to my line of work though is a great deal of travel, particularly when you have a family. Of course, as sad as it was to be away from the wife and baby, it’s also an opportunity to meet people. Recently, I was working in and near a small town called Grand Le Pierre in the vicinity of the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland. I was boarding with some lovely people. You couldn’t ask for better hosts.

The town of Grand Le Pierre.

Well, there is something I could have asked of my hosts though. The matriarch of the house does a lot of laundry. And she liked to do my laundry too. My trouble: she uses some commercial brand of laundry detergent she gets from Costco. I never did identify specifically which one (too busy to go hunting for the washing machine, etc.), but it certainly stinks. It’s one of those ones loaded with so much fragrance that “clean laundry” makes you dizzy. I meant to bring a bag of soapnuts along with me but I had to leave for Newfoundland in such haste that I forgot them. I also originally planned on just putting my dirty laundry into a bag and cleaning it when I got home to Nova Scotia again anyway. But it also seemed rude to say “I don’t want that inferior laundry detergent you use contaminating my clothes.” So since I didn’t have any of our pūr alternatives products here to offer up the better solution, I did the polite thing and let her do my laundry. That in mind, I also find it awkward for a stranger to be handling my underwear but that really is a different point.

The smell of fresh laundry may turn this man on. That is because this "fresh laundry smell" messes with your hormones. I am not this man.

 

Well, over the last few days before I finally left to come home she offered to clean my laundry so I didn’t have to return with dirty clothes. I couldn’t do it. I finally spilled the beans that the laundry detergent was making me nauseous (some days I would go on extra long excursions wearing more layers than necessary so I would sweat out the fragrance – ironic, isn’t it?). She wasn’t insulted (so far as I could tell), but rather it opened up the conversation for what I do in my other life (I rarely mentioned what my “other business” was outside of being a geologist). But in that conversation I re-realized many of the things we take for granted once we start getting so immersed in these facts. Certainly I myself, take it for granted what most other people still don’t know. Many of you, my readers may as well. Certainly, many of our customers with pūr alternatives have already done a lot of that figuring out too – so I wouldn’t be surprised if they take that for granted a bit too. And the longer you’re immersed in it, the more you distance yourself from those who just don’t know. Sadly, in that process I believe many of us are distancing ourselves from reality too. Well, social reality, anyway.

Newfoundland is a great place to get back in touch with that. Or least the non-St. John’s parts of Newfoundland. The parts of Newfoundland that you have to drive 3 hours from the nearest airport to a small coastal community of less than 300, where many of the people are retired on in-bred (first cousins often marry and procreate in these communities), and when a big storm hits the island the highways get washed out and you are stranded (you may have heard of Hurricane Igor – yes I was there). These communities are as down-to-earth as they get. Revolution doesn’t happen quickly here. We turn the wheels of change over here in the urban centres (at least this change as it stems from an educated background) but over there, the change isn’t felt until the big boys change it. Boutiques such as pūr alternatives are generally ignored. And I don’t blame them. If people don’t know there’s anything wrong with something, who would search for an alternative? These kinds of communities make up an extremely large part of Canada in general. We’ve got a lot of land here and we like our space. But the facts remain that 95% of the crap you’ll find at Wal-Mart, Zellers, Costco, Superstore, Sobeys, Canadian Tire, ... - this list could go on but you get the picture – that stuff is not safe. It’s not safe for our bodies, it’s not safe for our ecosystems, it’s not even good for our clothes. Admittedly, SOME are getting better at producing formulations that break down more efficiently in the environment. But the fragrance is still poisoning us and the detergents are still breaking down the fibres of our clothes. And really, it’s not just about laundry detergents here. This rant is easily extendable to all products that contain useless fragrance and other weird chemicals (which are usually redundant anyway).

So what is the point of this post, really? Well, certainly, in a large part just a rant. I haven’t been saying much lately and the experience with the Costco laundry detergent in Newfoundland got me fired up again. But it could also be considered a call to action. If you’re reading this you probably feel the same way as I do already. So I don’t need to convince YOU. What we all need however is to be more open. Many of us simply “suffer silently”; that is to say we politely don’t say when something is bothering us. Perhaps in casual conversation, mention how YOU feel about synthetic fragrances and the chemicals used in personal care products / cleaners / etc. Sure you can do this to/with someone you’ve talked about it before but that’s not the point. Mention it to someone who you haven’t really discussed that topic before. The idea being, that by planting these thoughts in as many peoples’ heads (even if they don’t agree with you at first) it is raising awareness. Awareness is where it all has to start and although we’re moving there and growing, we’re not even at that point yet.

There are two afterthoughts that I’d like to add to this to end this post. First, while I was away in Newfoundland, Stephanie started babysitting a friend’s child. He’s about a year older than ours and they play fairly well together. His mother though, also uses a rather pungent “fresh smelling” laundry detergent. As disgusting as children can be though, it’s the smell of his clothes that make me nauseous. Further proof perhaps that more people simply need to understand what “clean” actually means.