For most people, the early days of 2020 felt like a stabbing pain on their insides. With an impending pandemic and all signs are indicating a dramatic, brutal economic shutdown, a sense of retail paranoia set in. Would all businesses quickly decay away as doors shut?

But lowly, dystopian times weren’t to be for every business. Some businesses beat the odds and thrived. The perfume industry was one of those champions who didn’t just remain status quo but soared to new heights. In the summer of 2020, perfume sales began a remarkable, impressive ascent that would eventually tack on a 45% increase in perfume sales. 

Translation: Lots of new perfume buyers entered the market. 

At the time, rising perfume sales felt a bit confounding. But looking back, it made all the sense in the world. With the bad news story after horrible news story running through our homes – you know, the homes we stowed away our lives in for months – we looked for optimism. And beautiful scents inject our lives with optimism. Look no further than the essential oils industry for confirmation. 

People sought out packages of optimism for home delivery. If it made us happy and could be dropped on our doorsteps contactless, we’d entertain the idea. Perfume fit this mold with an unsettling exactness. 

But in what might be the paradox of the century, the more perfume customers expanded, the more that COVID-19 deteriorated and even eliminated people’s sense of smell. For some, their sense of smell returned promptly following recovery. For others, it took months. For some, they still can’t smell anything. 

For perfume lovers, losing a sense of smell felt a bit like salt in the wound. So many people leaned on perfume fragrances in therapeutic ways, COVID-19 found yet another way to strip people of any inkling of optimism. Worse more, many people remain smell-less, only able to admire their new, fancy perfume bottles. 

So what can be done to help regain smell?

Practice Smelling

You can practice smelling via smell training, as odd as this may sound. Dr. Nicole Aaronson is a pediatric otolaryngologist who told Healthline.com that you could retrain the olfactory senses. 

Aaronson recommends using coffee grounds, citrus, cloves, mint, eucalyptus, and citrus. Given perfumes offer a lot of scent-potency, we’d guess they could work well. 

Look out for a condition called Parosmia, which leads can turn formerly good smelling items into gross smelling ones. Parosmia can last for months.

Smell training is essentially physical therapy for the nose. Smelling a handful of potent scents for 20 seconds each daily can help stimulate the olfactory system. 

Don’t expect things to work out in a day; it can take months of work. However, a few minutes of smelling effort a day can pay off. You just have to keep at it. Expect efforts to take 3-6 months. It is recommended to perform smell training twice daily. 

Regenerating your sense of smell relies on stimuli; hence, the smell training efforts. 

You can buy smell training kits online, but the recommended ingredients are easy to obtain. 

Flush Your Nostrils

Flushing nostrils is recommended more for people who’ve lost their sense of smell due to congestion. It can also help with smell training, given that you don’t want obstructed nostrils.

A saltwater rinse can help clean out the nostrils and allow accurate smelling. Maybe drug stores sell saline rinse kits. The most famous being the Neti Pot. 

Remember, The Smell Loss Is Probably Temporary

Losing your sense of smell and taste can feel daunting and scary. However, the worst thing you can do is allow the condition to get into your head. Losing sense of smell was previously something that did happen after illnesses, but more rarely. Now with COVID-19, the condition is a bit more common. But for most people, the sense of smell is returning. So try to stay as patient as possible. 

So try to be patient with yourself. It is easy to allow anxiety to turn a bad situation worse. 

As mentioned, most people do indeed regain their sense of smell. But as noted above, there are things you can do to help expedite the situation. A little effort now could alleviate the issue in faster order.