Scenting Airing cupboards

Or Becky. What is an airing cupboard?

We don't have those here (or at least I've never seen them, and I've lived in different places through out the states). At least, not with a water tank. I have a linen cabinet that I keep my sheets in. It's built in the wall in the hallway where the kids bedrooms are. But it's just shelves with cabinet doors on the front.

I just ADORE airing cuboards! Our last house had a lovely big one. You can put slightly damp washing in there and it's dry by the morning. It keeps your linen wonderfully dry. On winter's mornings you can take your towel out of the airing cupboard and it's blissfully warmed. DMIL's house doesn't have one . However, she does have underfloor heating .

Zillah

...which, I am told, is Where It's At. I have never heard of Cologne and Cotton either, Zillah! What is it and where is it? Just the name sounds lovely

I haven't got an airing cupboard either My hot water heater thing is on the kitchen wall - we have 'constant' hot water. I think the heater you have Snork, would be a tank? The kind that runs out of hot water half way through washing your hair? Happened to me many a time when I lived with my parents! There was a limited amount of hot water in the tank and once it was gone it was a couple of hours before there was hot water again! It was terrible when four people were all trying to get a bath, the whole performance took all day!

I'll vouch for Wales being damp but gorgeous We visited Wales for a week a couple of years ago and even the air is permanently damp, somehow, even when it's not raining. We were quite high up, so I thought that was why (Snowdonia). Lovely place - recommended!

I like lavender scents, but usually mixed with other scents like lavender and chamomile, or lavender and rose. If you can't like blends with lavender, I suggest sweet orange and rosemary. It's a very "bright" scent. I'd make a pomander type sachet and put drops of essential oils in it.

Another option is to put highly scented soaps on the shelves around the linens. Bee & Flower soaps are good soaps for that and come in Rose, Sandalwood, Jasmine, and Gingeng.

And there's the perennial classic, cedar. Bags of cedar chips, cedar blocks of wood, etc. Some people don't like it because they used cedar in the bottom of their pet's cages and the scent is forever associated with their hampster, guinea pig, rabbit, or other critter. I personally really like it because my mother stored linens in a big cedar chest and it's what clean sheets smell like to me.

Thanks for explaining what a warming cupboard is, I wondered, too. I LOVED the towel warmers in the bathrooms when we visited Scotland. In the fancier hotels the towel warmers were part of the water heating system, in the smaller inns they were electric, but either way, they were pure luxury. Had never seen one before then. It's the bathrooms that really bring home to you that you're in a completely different country, I think.

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally

Oregon and Washington are as damp as Wales in parts, but I have never seen an airing cupboard in either place. However, my aunt in Oregon does have a towel warmer. I think she got it from the Sharper Image catalog or something like that. It gets too hot though, so I wouldn't want one with kids in the house.

Taiwan is also wet, wet, wet-- similar climate to New Orleans (but we lived on a mountain so were on high ground)-- but there are no airing cupboards there either. We ran dehumidifiers and used the collected water on our houseplants.