Good afternoon TCS!  A question about smells today.

 

What smell(s) instantly remind(s) you of "home"?
Remember, "home isn't a place, it's a feeling".

The smells that take me "home" are seldom present in my parents' home: incense and Jasmine rice. But they have a very homey feeling because I grew up getting together with my extended family every month or two to visit family members' graves (we always light incense when we visit), and my grandparents' house always smelled like Jasmine rice. It's the only rice I'll use now. I also love the smell of vinegar evaporating off smooth ceramic tile in fresh spring air on a day when the windows are open (at my parents' house). The visuals in my head are like a fabric softener commercial. Such a fresh smell!

Italian food cooking first thing in the morning.  My Mom would start her tomato sauce early and it cooked for hours, I would smell sausage and meatballs being made also.  That smell brings me home all the time.

I miss you Mom *tears* especially this time of year since you left us on Christmas Eve years ago.

The wood, cake, chicken, wet dog combination smell of my maternal grandparents' home, the boiled cabbage, cigarette, cookie smell combination of my paternal grandparents' home.

The smoke from a campfire. It doesn't take me home to my parents' house, but we camped so much when I was growing up, that campfire smoke will always and forever take me "home". There is never a campfire that I don't think of my father.

The smell of a wooden house, or enough wood that it smells like a house. We grew up as kids in a sturdy but creaky wooden house belonging to my late grandmother. The house is pretty big, with few walls and doors, so it's like a semi-outdoor home. When it rains, the outer, unprotected areas of the house would be wet, and there's this unique wetwood smell that wafts through the house after it rains. Very, very pleasant smell.

I love that "home" brings so many of us to our dearly departed. It's very telling of the childhood people had.

Although I haven't smelled it in a very long time but the scent of sheets dried on the line outside.

Apple pie, sauce or Shalimar bring me back to my Grandparent's house.  Also dried herbs; since my Gram always had hers drying suspended from the ceiling near the door.  The house still smells herb like; though Gram has been in a nursing home for 6 years now I think.  I can get a whiff of her perfume in the hallway or her bedroom too.  Sometimes I go in there just to open the bottle and smell it.  It's like she's hugging me like when I was little.  Sawdust also brings me there.  

Chicken-broth based soups bring me to my other grandparent's house.  For my mother's house I can't think of what scent.  Mom is always cooking or baking something new.  So maybe it's food in general.   But not with a greasy scent to it at all.  

I haven't been to Chicago where my family lives, and my sisters home is so welcoming. She always has candles burning. Mom makes her fudge and it smells go good.

Denice said:

 
Although I haven't smelled it in a very long time but the scent of sheets dried on the line outside.

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YES!   I have always loved to crawl into a bed that's freshly made from the sheets that have spent the day outside on the line! It is so comforting.

^ Same here! Beats dryer sheets, hands down, any day!

California apricots, the dried ones.

My mom would eat these nonstop, they were her private special treat and if we were lucky, she'd let us have a few.  They were really expensive and still are.  I can't even find good ones anywhere it seems.  Boxed brands are always too dried out to me.

When I think of home, I think mostly of my mother and the way she smelled.  Apricots and Shalimar lol.

The smell of gardenias take me back to growing up and home. There were gardenia bushes outside the dining room window. I loved how the smell wafted through the house.

Fresh cut grass in the summertime. Cilantro.  

I think anything baking. My mom bakes a lot.  Also sause. My dad is Italian, so every Sunday, we ate Italian. 

blueyedgirl5946 said:

The smell of gardenias take me back to growing up and home. There were gardenia bushes outside the dining room window. I loved how the smell wafted through the house.

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I don't know why because we never had them at home, but I've always loved the smell of lilacs in the spring. The first thing we did after moving to the property we have now is plant lilac bushes to the west of the house. In the spring, when the lilacs are blooming, I open the west windows and the scent moves through the house.

It's not a feeling of home, bit it is a feeling of utter peace. It relaxes me instantly. I have no idea what lilacs mean to me or meant to me when I was a child. I don't remember them being at my grandmother's house either. 

I'm afraid I can't remember. Maybe Friday evenings after work when mum was cooking the sabbath meal.