Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Should work/chores smell like food?

I had several tangentially related thoughts while cleaning my toilet this morning:

I have heard that cutting oils are available in scented varieties (cinnamon, for example), marketed to machine shops where the smell of oil pervades the work environment. I can see where reducing the smell of industrial fluids would be desirable, but a)I'm skeptical that adding scent to an oil makes the base petroleum smell less unpleasant, and b)I'm not sure industrial fluids should smell like food.

Partly because of the aversion my partner has to vinegar. I love vinegar as a food flavoring, but all of my attempts at dishes that include vinegar have been rejected. He explains this comes from his family's use of vinegar to clean up dog housebreaking incidents (so smelling vinegar makes him think of dog feces), and has been exacerbated by my using vinegar to disinfect my menstrual cup.

These things came to mind while cleaning my toilet because of this new "green" product from Clorox. It's the same price and size as their regular toilet cleaner, and I'm fairly crunchy (apparently people who would have been called "hippies" thirty years ago are now called "crunchy"), so I bought it recently. It smells absolutely delicious. I'm fairly pleased with its performance, and less worried about my birds being affected by the chemical fumes when I clean, so overall it's a positive. But I have to say the degree to which the odor is pleasant is a little disconcerting.

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