What does 23-year-old air freshener smell like?

This is going to be one of those posts where I have no choice but to embar­rass myself a bit, as you’re no doubt won­der­ing why I’m even post­ing about air fresh­ener in the first place. Obvi­ously I must have had a need to use it–I’ll just leave it at that.

Pos­si­bly the only per­son on the inter­net who might appre­ci­ate this post is Shawn Robare over at Branded in the 80s , whom I recently learned has an affin­ity for old cans of Fresh’n Up room deodor­iz­ers and pas­tel toi­let paper . This one’s for you, Shawn.

I was over at my grandmother’s house for din­ner this past Wednes­day, as is our rit­ual every Wednes­day, since she lives nearby and it’s how we keep up. Any­way, after din­ner I was using her bath­room (no need for details) when I dis­cov­ered this:

The dated shit-brown col­ored pack­ag­ing and 99 cent pric­etag gave me instant pause–I knew right away this must be some lost relic of the past. Not to men­tion you don’t see the word “pot­pourri” used too often these days. Sure enough, when I looked a lit­tle closer, I find this is a can of air fresh­ener from 1989. 

Three thoughts imme­di­ately pop into my head:

1. How the hell does my grand­mother still have this in her bathroom?
2. Why is it still FULL?
3. Does it still smell good? (After all, doesn’t stuff like this expire?)

With no other options under the sink, and no matches in the vicin­ity, I knew what had to be done.

What does it smell like?

The scent printed on the can is the generic-sounding “Fresh Spice,” which was appar­ently brand new at the time my grand­mother bought this. I wouldn’t exactly describe the smell as “fresh,” but I sup­pose that’s to be expected some twenty-three years later. It smelled over­whelm­ingly like cin­na­mon, but also with a heavy under­tone of ammo­nia; prob­a­bly because it had been fes­ter­ing for so long before I found it. The smell wasn’t bad , but it was very powerful–like walk­ing into the fac­tory where they make  Red Hots , or so I imagine.

I’m also happy to report it was still effec­tive at cov­er­ing up any, er, unpleas­ant­ness. Pretty impres­sive for a prod­uct over two decades old. Thanks to Renuzit’s late eight­ies scent tech­nol­ogy, cri­sis was averted!

P.S. I put the can back under the sink and didn’t say a word to my grand­mother. I decided this will be a fun game to play with myself when­ever I visit–how long will the can of 1989 air fresh­ener survive?

More stuff and things!