The Perks of Smelling A Wallflower (Or, Why I Should Own Stock in Bath & Body Works)

I'm really, really proud of this.

Like many of the female persuasion, I am more than a little obsessed with things that smell good. I'm constantly trying new smellies for my house - candles, sprays, plug-ins, diffusers, oil burners... whatever I can get my hands on. But my issue was always that no matter how good it smells, the scent never really lasts.

That's what made me fall in love with Wallflowers from Bath & Body Works, which my mother introduced me to. (She's a smart lady, that one.) I went to the bathroom in her house and remarked on how good it smelled. Then I used the same bathroom a few hours later and noticed something odd. It smelled exactly the same. Just as noticeable, just as pleasant - how was this possible? 

Wallflowers are the secret. They're BBW's version of the "Glade plug-in", but with your favorite Bath & Body Works scents and a few Wallflowers-exclusives too. I don't know what kind of sorcery they use to make it happen, but to me, the real difference between these and other plugins is that they consistently smell strong and good.

I have a few:

These babies are all locked and loaded throughout my house 24/7. The holiday ones don't get put away outside the season - rather, I hide them behind furniture.

Yes, I'm obsessed. I love them all. These days I can't pass a Bath & Body Works store without losing $20, and that is heartbreaking to my not-so-inner cheapskate.

And that's the only downside to Wallflowers: they are not cheap as compared to regular plugins. The cheapest you can usually swing them is $2.50 a bulb. Yikes. But I have made that concession and worked their regular purchase into my otherwise frugal budget, and I couldn't be happier. I wish they could put me on some sort of subscription and send them to me all the time.

I guess they do have one other downside: unlike plugins and Febreze candles, you can't just buy them at Walmart. You have to go to a Bath and Body Works or go online. I really wish they'd do one of those strategic alliances with Target and start selling them there - but I'm not sure making them even easier for me to buy is a good idea.

In my Wallflower experiences, I have learned a few do's and don'ts through trial and error. On that note, here are my Wallflower Rules to Scent By:

Wallflower Rules to Scent By

• My favorite scents as perfumes do NOT make good room scents. Japanese Cherry Blossom and Twilight Woods are two of my favorite scents to wear, yet they are particularly atrocious in enclosed spaces like a bathroom. 
• Conversely, scents that smell like cologne (Ocean Escape, oddly, is one) are ahh-mazing for bedrooms. (But maybe I just like the idea of a good-smelling man in my room - ooh la la!)
• Stick with neutral woodsy, herbsy, spicy, or LIGHT floral scents in eating areas like kitchens and dining rooms. Anything that smells too much like a specific food (e.g. fruit or cake-y smells) can get gross mixed with cooking. My worst experiment was with a caramel corn scent in the dining room - it ruined two meals before I relented and moved it.
• Fruit, however, works very well near litter boxes. Fruity scents mask litterbox smells the best! Avoid apples, though, because they always mix in cinnamon or spice and you don't want anything that spices up the poop scent.
• But mint is REALLY gross on top of the smell of cat pee. Just no.

Are you a fellow Wallflower addict? Tell me about it!

I have no relationship with any of the brands or products mentioned herein. I was not compensated in any way for this post. All opinions on Mommy Dove are 100% my own, even on sponsored content, but this isn't sponsored.