Monday, August 26, 2013

Today was awesome, but then... it wasn't.

Winding down my day at 4:15ish this afternoon and heard a weird noise in our garage, like somebody closing a window too hard. I wasn't too worried about it, and asked someone to check on it...

My three bins of fragrance oils had toppled- fortunately, from only about a foot off the ground, but still... The garage was already starting to smell like a jumble of fragrance oils and there was broken glass on the ground. (We've got old carpet on the garage floor so it's warm to walk out there.) In my shock I just imagined broken glass everywhere, all of our fragrances wasted- WOW, what an awful thought!

We took the bins, one by one, to the kitchen for cleanup and to assess the damage. Nobody was more relieved than me to find that only three bottles had actually broken. Sadly, they were brand new bottles, and they were three fragrances that absolutely do not go together- Herbal Essence, Cream Cheese Frosting, and Moonlight Pomegranate (all Bramble Berry, and amazing fragrances on their own!). I mean, if I had accidentally made some amazing, never-thought-of blend, I totally would have saved the oil. But no... Herbal musk cream cheese floral frosting spice. Not fun.

The cleanup was all uphill from there. We had to glove up, wash the oil off of each bottle with dish soap, carefully dry them, and we also gave each bottle a rubdown with Clorox cleanup to kill any leftover fragrance. Took. Hours. It's a very strange thing to think about, but I spent a lot of the time being very happy that the labels that many suppliers use are very high quality. Four of the five companies' labels held up under all of that really well, with very little peeling or running. (We spent most of the cleanup time rewriting the labels on the bottles of one supplier. Their products are top-quality, but it struck me as odd that you would not have an oil-resistant label on a bottle of fragrance oil. Maybe people smashing their bottles doesn't come up much.) Our Bramble Berry fragrance bottles' labels were some of the hardest hit by spilled fragrance oil, but they came through it not too worse for wear. On some of them, you can't even tell that they went through an oil dousing, soapy water and bleach spray. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE BB's waterproof label paper? I have. Several times.) It makes me glad we use the same tough paper for our products. It's a small thought, but it was reassuring.

Tomorrow I have to give our house the sniff test to see if I dripped fragrance oil anywhere and clean it up. If you think about it, we did spill a full 12 ounces of fragrance oil between our garage and the fragrance bins. Scary.

2 comments:

  1. That sounds so frustrating! I'm so sorry to hear about your fragrances that broke and spilled. I hope the clean-up goes well and that it doesn't smell too bad. Thanks for the feedback on our labels, we are glad to hear that they could go through all that and still be readable. =)

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    1. Thanks so much, Anne-Marie. :-) All is well now- the housewide "sniff test" went smoothly, no leftover mixed scent in the air, and everything is airing out nicely in the garage. It was an insane afternoon but now we can look back and laugh about it. Always good.

      It also meant that when I was reordering the 3 fragrances that were lost, I could get a couple more that we haven't had the chance to sample yet. It's our reward to ourselves for the hard cleanup work. ;-)

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