Why Amish Women Never Buy Air Freshener — The Simmering Pot That Makes a House Smell Like Home

Why Amish Women Never Buy Air Freshener — The Simmering Pot That Makes a House Smell Like Home. For about twenty-five cents and half an hour on the back burner, my whole house smells like apples and cinnamon — and in forty-one years I have never once bought a can of air freshener. This is how you make a house smell good naturally, the plain way. My name is Mammi Sarah. I am Amish, and I have kept house in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for over forty years, in the same farmhouse where I raised eight children. My mother ran a simmer pot every washing Monday and every visiting Sunday, and her mother before her. It was just what the back of the stove was for. You have a forty-foot aisle of sprays and plug-ins promising you that feeling, and not one can make it. A smell from a can is a picture of a thing; a smell from a pot is the thing itself, and your nose knows the difference. I will show you what goes in, what it costs, and the three pantry things that make it work — one you would never guess — and the honest truth folks are rarely told: the word "fragrance" on those labels hides a whole recipe the company never has to spell out. ⚠️ It is a pot on a live flame. Keep it on the lowest heat, never let it run dry, and never leave the house or go to bed with it going. Water in the pot, always. Treat it with the same respect your grandmother did. Tell me in the comments what home smells like to you — your mother's kitchen, your grandmother's stove, name it for me. I read every single one. Subscribe for more of the old ways 🔔 — next time, I am taking you upstairs, to the seven-dollar bundle of herbs that hangs in every bedroom of this house, and what it does is not what you think.