One of the biggest changes that has had an impact on everyone who is trying to survive the coronavirus pandemic is the amount of time spent inside the home. Pre-covid, the house sometimes felt like a hotel — you return to it just to bathe and sleep. In the world outside the front door, there were concerts, musicals, festivals, carnivals, flea markets and malls. There were bars, pubs and clubs where you could walk out only when the sun rose. The space you occupied within four walls was not as important as the activities that you were occupied with.

The covid lockdowns changed our relationship with spaces. To some people, the difference does not matter — it’s just four walls and a roof. To the more semantically-sensitive, it is a big difference. You can stay in someone’s house and then come home to your own. Thanks to a pandemic, we are making homes again, instead of building houses. As a structure, it doesn't even matter if anyone is staying in it or not. A home however, is more than that. A home represents comfort, protection and happiness. It conjures up a place where there are cushions on the sofa, plaid tablecloths and something is baking in the oven or cooking on the stove. A home is warm and inviting.

Whiff Of Life

One of the best indicators of the difference between a house and a home is the smell. We all remember what grandma’s kitchen smelled like, or what mum’s hands smelled like when she was kneading dough, what our brothers or sisters smelled like after an afternoon at the park, or what the dog smelled like after the rain. Smell and taste are the oldest senses that are essential for survival. While the sense of taste gives basic information about sweet, sour, bitter, and so on, most of our food experience depends on the sense of smell. It is smell before taste that tells us if the food is edible.

When we come home to or pass by a kitchen, to something cooking, it is our sense of smell that directs us to the source, before we can see, hear or even taste it. When we lose our sense of smell, we lose our sense of taste and that limits our experience. Smell alone can evoke intense memories and emotions. Food at your favorite restaurant would taste different if it smells different. All that we consider flavour is smell. Don’t believe me? Try pinching your nose when you are eating chocolate or vanilla, all you can taste is sweet.

The Right Scent

Smell changes the ambience of a place. There are a number of ways to ensure that your living space smells good and makes you feel good, all of which you can DIY at home! You can choose your favourite essential oils for your diffuser, burn incense, make your own house spray, get a candle making kit ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TY8HNQ6 ) and make your own scented candles, or simply make a scented cotton or wooden ball for the living room or the fridge. DIY scents are one of the best ways to beat lockdown blues. It is simple and one of the more affordable ways to change and modify the sensory experience inside your home. With more stay-home time, heightened anxiety, and deteriorating mental health — defining features of the post-COVID life — people are seeing home fragrance as an easy solution for escaping reality, or at least the madness that lies outside the front door.

It may seem like a minor thing, but consciously deciding on a scent for the space we call home goes a long way in ensuring how cosy and clean we feel. Whether you share a home with someone or live alone, falling asleep and waking up to pleasing scents, can make your day that much better and keep your mood up, especially when you are going to be in that space the whole day and night, for weeks and months. Choosing the right scent can help shift your mood and transform the space. It is also an integral part of self-care and self-expression. Think home spa and signature scent.

It is important to pick the right scents for your home. Certain scents can help reduce stress, allow better sleep, perk you up and make you feel more confident. Scents such as citrus, cinnamon and mint are known to increase alertness and concentration, and used at your work spaces, can help improve productivity. An additional tip, after smelling the same scent for more than 15 minutes, we actually become less sensitive to that particular smell, making us think the scent has disappeared. To counter that, you can use different scents in different areas of the home, so your olfactory system gets a reboot as you walk from room to room.