I'm glad to smell my family and friends. I know the smell of the afternoon in my office, warmed by sun, as well as the smell of the advent of spring. Before opening my eyes on awakening this morning, I could smell that the dogs and cat had joined me in bed, but my husband was up. In the next hour, I smelled mown grass and a waft of cloves in the park; the mustiness of a raincoat taken out of a back closet; when the toast was ready; and the beautiful, straw-like smell of the top of my son's head. I relish it all.

— Alexandra Horowitz, author of Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, from Learn To Sniff Like A Dog And Experience The World In A New Way at NPR.

Smell, the thinking goes, is not our strongest sense. Our lowly noses are eclipsed by our ability to see the world around us, hear the sound of music and feel the touch of a caress. Even animals, we're taught, have a far more acute sense of smell than we do.

But one scientist argues the idea of an inferior sense of smell stems from a 19th-century myth.

— Read more at Why Your Sense Of Smell Is Better Than You Might Think at NPR.

So, in more layman’s terms, olfactory fatigue occurs such that when you sense a specific odor, the receptors associated with that molecule can no longer be stimulated by similar molecules because the channels that create the electrical impulse will ultimately close. The result leaves only receptors that get stimulated by other molecules (different types of odors)- thus, your propensity to sense new smells more strongly, and the ones you get consistently bombarded with eventually no longer being detected at all. Congratulations, you’re now nose-blind.

— Business Insider explains olfactory fatigue. Read more at Human beings can't smell themselves, even when they stink — here's why.