Do You Smell That?

Over the past eight years or so, I have been on a quest to find the best candle. Yeah, I know. I set big goals. But smells (more specifically, good smells) are important to me. I'm a very olfactory sense-centered person. Smells can awaken long forgotten memories for me in an instant...the scent of a plastic doll or of a certain soap whip me back to my childhood in a heartbeat. I also have the insane ability to accurately label a smell. I won't say that I can identify it, because, well, I can't. But I can attach two or three other smell names of what the original smell might possibly be. Are you still with me? An example of how I would label a smell might be, "It smells like someone is burning off their hair while eating a peach" or "It smells like an electrical fire at a chocolate factory".

So, given my appetite for smells, I obviously love good smelling candles. Ever since I've lived on my own, I have been on the hunt for the perfect candle. Of course, the obvious attributes of the perfect candle would include long-lasting and smelling good, right? Right, but a measure of a great candle is how well they can fill a space with the intoxicating aroma of clean linen or fresh meadows. There are many, many candles out there that can entrap you in the store with their strong, bold scents, but as soon as you get them home and light their wick afire, their scent fizzles out faster than the excitement in a child's eyes when they discover the Santa that has stopped by their house on Christmas Eve is actually their neighbour Wally from down the street.

For the longest time, I trusted Febreeze. Actually, I believed in Febreeze. I desperately wanted Febreeze to be "the one". And we a had decent relationship for awhile. But then...I found something better. And I fell in love. Hard. For me, there will never be another. Glade Candles are the perfect candle. Their scents are not too bold nor too bland. The way the candle smells when you sniff it in the store is the exact same way it will smell when you light it in your home. And the best part is, their aroma fills a space that is bigger than the two-by-two foot space most other candles fill. Glade candles literally (and I'm not just throwing that word out there like a valley girl) fill my entire upstairs with all the spiced apple goodness that I can handle.

But there is one final test that no other candle, air freshener, or plug-in, light-up, extra-outlet, no wick, just-one-squeeze, oil filled, infused with the scent of fairies' tears, doubles as a night-light contraption can pass. And that is the test of being able to mask the smell of a litter box. And not just any litter box. But a litter box that belongs to not one, not two, but three full grown cats. While the litter box is attended to every day, there are times when I have to question how on earth the cats managed to order out for Mexican food because the smell coming from down stairs can rival that of a German pig farm (and I only use that as a reference because I know first hand what a pig farm in Germany smells like, not because I have anything against the Germans). And, you guessed it, the Glade Candle (Apple Cinnamon) can mask the smell of a litter box that belongs to three cats. And to me, no other air freshener can (say it with me) hold a candle to it.