Hip mom Rule #11: Aromatherapy Anyone?

I grew up with one brother and three sisters. Our house always smelled very sweet from an exhaustive amount of hairsprays (remember the 80’s teased hair? That required a LOT of hairspray for four girls), gels, mousse, perfumes, and candles. We were all accomplished athletes, but we were careful to apply Teen Secret to our underarms and pretty smelling lotions to our newly shaved legs. You would never guess from walking into our home that we had just spent an accumulated 10 hours in the gym.

Now I live with a husband and three little boys. The sweet smells of lotions and perfumes have been replaced by the not-so-sweet smells of sweaty play, dirty feet, experiments gone awry, and potty-training accidents.

One day after a long spell of too-cold-to-open-the-windows weather, I was hit with an odor so pungent that I searched for nearly an hour trying to find the source of the mysterious and ghastly smell. After furtively searching room after room, I began to realize that the smell was not localized to any one space. The entire house smelled like sweaty little boys! Where was the calming, relaxing scents of days gone by?

In spite of the cold, I opened the windows, turned the ceiling fans to full power, packed up the kids, and headed to Target. I bought three new, very powerfully scented candles (in my favorite scents, of course). Then I sauntered over to the beauty section and picked out new bottle of lotion that smelled like eucalyptus and not like new babies. Just because I have baby lotion on hand doesn’t mean I have to use it!

When my husband arrived home from work later that day, he walked in and gave me a long kiss hello. “It smells so good in here! You smell so good!” he exclaimed. Mission accomplished.

Just because I am a hip mother of three rambunctious and energetic boys doesn’t mean my house or I need to smell like one, too! So think about those scents that helped define you earlier in life and reintroduce them to your new life as a hip mother. You might be surprised at how effective a little aromatherapy can be.