Of all our senses I think our sense of smell always gets the least attention. In fact, until you get a nasty head cold you really take it for granted. Several years ago, before the birth of our first daughter we made the life changing decision to rid our home of all the synthetic products that had accumulated over the years. All of the cleaning products, personal care products and foods that contained synthetic ingredients got the boot. Included were all the room sprays, plug in deodorizers, perfumes and colognes that had found our way into our lives.While we started to notice numerous benefits right away (all our chronic allergies went away!) another remarkable thing occurred.

After a few weeks of being free of all the synthetic fragrances that had filled our home we noticed a vast improvement in our sniffers. While the natural scent of flowers, morning coffee and other simple pleasures was now much more alive and vivid, we became acutely aware of all synthetic fragrances. I could actually smell people at the grocery store before I saw them (sorry to the little old lady doused in Channel Number 5). Room deodorizers, dryer sheets, sanitizers and the like all started to smell far more noxious than they ever had. To be honest, they almost brought about a feeling of sickness!

We soon realized how accustomed our bodies had become to the bombardment of synthetic fragrance in our everyday lives. Our sense of smell was trying to warn us of the formaldehyde, phthalates, and other toxins that these products contained but we had beat it into submission so it couldn’t properly do its job of protecting us. As I mentioned previously, I had lived for many years under the false assumption that I had chronic allergies resulting from pollen and dust…dead wrong. My allergies had been caused by those synthetic compounds that we had been using in our home.

As we started to take joy in the natural scents in our lives and after working with the natural essential oils that we use in our soaps and body products, we decided to use some of our favorite essential oils to create sprays for use around the house. We were pleasantly surprised to find our homemade sprays made with natural essential oils provided just the right amount of scent without the heavy handedness of synthetic fragrances or the noxious fumes. After a few more years of playing around we went another step further and replaced the alcohol we had been using to diffuse the essential oils with vegetable glycerin. Perfection! Our new room sprays no longer had the alcohol undertones and they were safer to use around the home (especially with little ones underfoot). The addition of naturally derived vegetable glycerine also made for a lovely body spray and my wife was overjoyed to have a safe alternative to perfume (she had been pretty upset about dumping the hundreds of dollars of perfumes when we did our clean sweep).

Anyway, enough with the back story. After much disappointment with what was offered as an alternative to synthetic fragrance sprays, we’re happy to announce the two newest additions to the G.B. Proudfoot’s product lineup. Our natural Lavender Linen & Pillow Spray and Ylang Ylang Linen & Pillow Spray (click on the links to learn more). Both are free of all the synthetic and toxic ingredients that could be making you sick. These two sprays are the first of many that we’ll be offering as we’re ecstatic to be giving people a natural alternative for scents in their homes. At $7.99 they are competitively priced with synthetic deodorizers (those guys must be making a killing as synthetic fragrances are a fraction of the cost of natural essential oils!). We promise that once you too allow your sense of smell a fighting chance you’ll be pleasantly rewarded with these natural scents.

If you have any questions or comments about our new Linen & Pillow sprays please feel free to contact us. We value your feedback and would love to hear some of your suggestions for other natural fragrances you’d like us to offer.