Order and Chaos: The Smell of Everything, All At Once

OlfactoryLibrary, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Impulsively, I set on a tedious organizing job today and as often happens with compulsive things,
it took the better part of my day to complete the task.
One of my interesting projects is writing ad copy to a reputable essential oil supplier. And samples of oils, absolutes, CO2 and other essences have accumulated rapidly to the point of complete chaos. And while chaos has its inspiring moments, for the most part it creates an atmosphere that is uninviting which creates further procrastination and therefore more chaos...

One thing that constantly comes up whenever I organize my oils or perfume stock is the intense, strange and surprising aroma of "everything, all at once". There seems to be a unique smell to every house or space that is the sum of all the little smelly things that reside in that space. When the space belongs to a perfumer - intense fragrance are to be expected, and methods that try to avoid that mish-mash of scents that are so confusing when you work are a big challenge. Hopefully this sorting and organizing project is going to make the job easier so I can focus on one scent at a time.

What I spent most of the day doing was setting up a "building block" library or catalog; each sample is placed in a tiny ziplock bag onto an index card. The index card bears the name of the essence (botanical name included) and any notes I have taken (or will take in the future) about the note. The little ziplock back is stapled at the top (so there is no holes in it) and is alos used ot seal the scent strips. This way I can try and evaluate a few scents at the same time and than come back to them at a later day. This certainly makes the project more approachable and doable (especially when one needs to compare 5 types of lavender or eucalyptus and can't find them - well now that won't be a problem as they are all alphabetized).

OlfactoryLibraryKewda, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.