What scents trigger childhood memories for you?

Vetiver and lavender scents on my father’s cardigan, worn at home after work, are still associated in my mind with a feeling of comfort and security.

A timely question! Recently I was enjoying a bowl of soup at work. I was surprised that the smell immediately evoked a memory of an out-of-town restaurant that I only visited once for some special occasion when I was probably between 7 and 12 years of age. I don't remember what I had to eat there, only some visual aspects of the dining room that captured my attention .

When I was a mere baby - not even walking. I was with my mother in our Dallas home in the backyard and she was thinning out purple irises. I was in a white sun suit wearing a white bonnet and sitting on a white blanket. My mother handed me an iris bloom. I squeezed it in my hand and then I smelled it. I remember the purple juice dripping on the side of my hand. To this day when I smell an iris it evokes that memory of about 68 years ago. It is the only memory I really have at such a very young age.

The smell after rain in the deserts in Arizona

My earliest smell memory comes from the first plastic drinking glass I sipped from. I can vividly recall the sharp, kind of tangy smell and taste. It wasn't exactly pleasant and was very noticeable.

Strong coffee - my grandparents always had a pot on the stove and drank coffee throughout the day. My dad also drank coffee.

Barns and animals are parallel with coffee

I grew up in a pre-war apartment in Manhattan, and during the fall, sometime in October, the radiators in the building

would be turned on, and that initial first smell of the radiators always brings me back to a very young child. It’s dry, a little dusty, sort of a very old warm dust. And it’s combined with the sounds of the radiator tinkling and knocking and hissing, so it’s the smell and the sounds combined. It is incredibly soothing whenever I do happen to get a whiff of it, which isn’t that often, because the other thing is, it’s that initial first smell that is the most comforting and reassuring. And I only encounter that precise radiator smell in prewar buildings on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

Like radiators all over the city do have a similar smell, but the UWS has its own unique radiator smells! (I’ve checked.)

Creosote brings up early memories of going somewhere via elevated train platform in Chicago, seemingly when grandparents would take me to a daytime Cubs game at Wrigley field.

my earliest smell memory still haunts me. I think it was Gerber baby foods that made porridge in little glass jars with orange labels on them and I used to love that porridge. It wasn't quite oatmeal and I'm not quite sure what it was because they stopped making it when I was still a very young child. But that smell… I'm still looking for a cooked cereal that tastes delicious as that porridge was.

I'm seeing several scents that also bring me back to my childhood: salty, ocean air; lily of the valley (from my childhood backyard); chlorine from my many days at the community pool; Old Spice (dad's aftershave). It's humbling to think about how much context our brains can store, and just a whiff of some scent pulls up a vivid memory locked in there.

When i was a child, I lived in an apartment building, and the hallway had the odor of cabbage cooking. Years later, I visited the same building and the odor was still there. It was kind of a shock.

I can think of numerous scents that take me back to my childhood in the 80s and 90s, and for better or for worse, many of my nostalgic scents are distinctly vinyl. The off-gassing PVC scent of Smurf figurines, the baby powder/warm plastic scent of Cabbage Patch dolls, and of course the intentionally cloying fruity smell of Strawberry Shortcake dolls all stir a certain sentimentality! Even some memories of summertime outdoor fun are distinctly plastic - particularly the smell of water out of a warm hose filling our plastic collapsable swimming pool. Looking back, I’m not really sure what all that says about growing up in the 80s!

AND - not all was artificial. My grandparents and great grandparents provided me with some of my best scent memories. I recall warm, flaky dough of freshly baked pies, the sweet aroma of stored produce in the fruit cellar, and a rose scent that makes me immediately think of my nana. I don’t think she wore perfume and I’m not sure why that scent in particular makes me think of her, but it is a visceral response.

My all-time favorites are scents from what I would consider adventures (or at least, vacations!) My paternal grandparents camp: moist earth, newly awakened moss, forest leaf litter, campfires. Even the slight musty smell of the old place itself is a cherished memory. The scents of time spent at the beach - warm sand, salt air, Coppertone, even the chlorine from the pool. 51 weeks a year I longed for that combination!

A box of old fashioned Crayola crayons and an open jar of the white, minty smelling paste from the early 1950's. Also the smell of Ditto (not mimeograph) printed paper from the same era. Before we would pass the paper to the kid behind us we would take a deep sniff! Probably an early high that carried over to the '60's!

An early memory may be a smell that an electric shaver of my father had , as also a specific aftershave , in use by other parties at a place in Berlin, the question from where they knew that is part of necessary investigations , to create an impression of smell , may work since several years , to create a sphere or smaller area with just the same impression, where you can easily find out , some thermics should move it too , made me at few places asking , what was in use ..As olfactory memory, goes longer ways , same like impressions not stored after the first words , a specific baby powder maybe could be the oldest memory, but not in a direct relation to my oldest visual impression where i saw a balcony , a short one , from the downside while I laid in something that moved , looking upside , in real , not the balcony moved at a blue sky , as the short sequence seemed , It may had wheels , I was maybe one year or even a bit less or more , since my grandma told me , with one year I was already running like a bee.

My grandmother, who lived next door, smelled of Lady Esther face powder. The smell of yeast when Mom baked bread. Waxy crayons, sharpened pencils, lilacs, rain in the desert when it starts to wet the ground, the inky smell in the post office where Dad worked, coal burning in the stove.

Wood smoke, particularly oak and hickory, the smell of a clean lake, Barbeque on charcoal, lilacs and lily of the valley take me back.

One of the earliest smells I recall fondly is that of sharpened pencils. The smell in the air just before it rains. Gasoline. The smell of disinfectants in a doctor's office. Hamburgers on an outdoor grill. Lilacs.