By now most of us know not to keep our bottles of perfume next to the sink in the bathroom where light and heat will degrade the scent. Plus, if you’re like me, you’d need a sink as big as Paul Bunyan’s to have enough room for all your bottles. So, if the bathroom’s out, where do you keep your perfume?
For a long time, I’ve kept my perfume in a cupboard built into my dresser. The cupboard is about a foot high and a foot-and-a-half deep. It handily holds fifty or so bottles. (After typing that number, I’ll pause here and take a deep breath.) The cupboard takes up half of the top of the dresser, and on the other half is a cupboard with drawers that I use to store samples.
This system has worked pretty well so far. The mahogany cupboards keep out the light and insulate the bottles…
Sometimes I wonder if my interest in perfume is a waste of time, or even immoral, given the turmoil of the world these days. I wonder if I should take the money I plow into perfume and send it to Mercy Corps instead. Why do I spend more time thinking about a good story or the smell of wood smoke than about the fate of the Endangered Species Act? Why do I spend part of each morning reading my favorite perfume blogs instead of reading The Nation?