Losing your sense of smell or having it fade can throw off your experience of food, environments, and even your memories. Everyday moments like enjoying a home-cooked meal or catching the scent of a loved one's cologne can become muted or disappear entirely. When your sense of smell goes quiet, it can feel disorienting and frustrating. Some people find themselves constantly sniffing familiar objects hoping for even the faintest scent, trying to reconnect with the smells they once took for granted.
Smell kits are rising in popularity as a helpful tool for retraining the nose. Whether you're recovering after an illness or trying to sharpen your sense of smell, structured scent exposure can help bring it back to life. These kits usually include a few distinct scents in a form that’s easy to use, designed to gently reintroduce your brain to smells over time. There's no pressure to get results overnight. Instead, smell retraining encourages consistency, patience, and mindfulness through daily scent work.
Understanding Smell Kits
A smell kit is a collection of scent-focused tools used to help your brain relearn how to identify and react to individual smells. These kits are often used by people who’ve experienced partial or full smell loss, or those relying on scent therapy to improve their sensory abilities. They’re also helpful for those with distorted scents, where things may smell different than they used to.
Most smell kits include some variation of the following:
- Four to six small jars or vials filled with different concentrated scents like lemon, clove, eucalyptus, or rose
- Labeled caps or containers to avoid confusion between scents
- Instructions or a suggested schedule to guide regular use
Users are encouraged to smell each scent for about 20 to 30 seconds at a time, usually once or twice daily. The idea isn't to trigger a strong immediate response. You just want to remind your brain what each smell is supposed to represent. Over days, weeks, or even months, these short sessions may start to reconnect memories and sensory processing between your nose and brain.
Scent training works on the brain’s built-in ability to adapt. Even if one area is damaged or slow, your brain can sometimes make new pathways to recover lost functions. With repeated exposure, you’re helping your body remember how to smell again. Think of it like re-learning how to hit a baseball after a long time off. You start small, and with time, the rhythm starts to come back.
Effective Techniques For Using Smell Kits
The key to getting good results from a smell kit is how you use it. You’ll want a consistent routine but also ways to stay engaged as you go. Over time, you might notice small improvements that feel random or unexpected. That just means the process is working in different ways for different people.
Here are three ways to make the most of your smell kit training:
1. Build a Daily Practice
- Pick a predictable time of day where you’ll have a few minutes without distractions
- Smelling each scent for about 30 seconds is enough. Focus on one scent at a time
- Give yourself enough space between each smell, maybe a short quiet pause or a breath of fresh air
- Repeat the full round once a day, or twice a day if you’re up for it
2. Boost Scent Recognition Using Challenges
- Once you’ve gotten used to the smells while reading their labels, try mixing them up
- Smell one without looking, then guess which scent it is
- Later, test yourself by removing one scent and trying to figure out which one is missing
3. Link Smells to Meaningful Memories
- When smelling something like clove or citrus, think about a memory connected to it
- Picture the moment clearly. Who was there? What were you doing? What did it feel like?
- This helps your brain pair scent with an emotional or physical response
These kinds of techniques help move beyond just sniffing a jar. They turn smell retraining into something active and personal. It becomes less about checking a box and more about being aware of the moment. That’s where real progress often shows up.
Tips For Successful Scent Retraining
Getting your sense of smell back isn’t always a straight line. Some days you might feel like you’re making real progress. Other days it might stall. That’s where patience steps in. Smell retraining is about slow, steady exposure. Instead of trying to rush the process, it helps to look for small moments, like catching a whiff of something unexpected, that show it’s working.
Here are some tips that can make the retraining process easier to manage and more impactful:
- Don’t expect a full return overnight. Sometimes people expect big results fast, but scent recovery often happens in little pieces. One day you might barely notice the lemon scent, and a few days later it clicks
- Stick to a plan, but don’t be afraid to adjust. If two sessions a day feels tiring or makes you dread the practice, go with once a day. Consistency is more helpful than trying to push yourself too far
- Celebrate subtle wins. Picking up even part of a scent adds up to bigger shifts over time, especially if those moments happen more often or last longer
- Keep things low stress. Avoid doing scent training when other smells, like food cooking or heavy cleaners, are filling the room. You want as few distractions as possible so your brain can focus on the scent in front of you
Also think about the space you use each time. Scent can be affected by your environment. Try to find a clean, neutral-smelling room without leftover odors from earlier meals or candles. Doing your retraining in the same place can help your brain make stronger connections too. An environment that feels comfortable encourages you to build the habit and stick with it.
Track Your Progress With a Scent Journal
Writing things down may seem small, but it can help you notice patterns and markers of progress you might overlook. Using a scent journal gives you a clear timeline of your journey, from the first sniff to your ability to recognize complex scent blends later on.
You don’t need anything complicated. A notebook or note-taking app will work just fine. For each session, jot down:
- The date and time
- Which scents you used
- What you noticed (did anything smell stronger? Did something smell different?)
- Any physical or emotional responses
- Memories or images the scent evoked
Some people also like to rate their scent detection from 1 to 5, just as a basic scale. You could circle back once a week and look over your notes to see if things have shifted. Even on days it feels like nothing’s changing, the journal might show signs of improvement you’ve missed.
One example is someone training with rose oil who couldn’t smell it for weeks. Then one evening, the scent seemed vaguely floral. Not strong, but there. That same week, they realized they could also smell their shampoo again. Those small clues added up, and their journal helped piece together the moments that marked true change.
Recognize Every Win Along the Way
It can feel easy to downplay progress when senses return slowly. But every breakthrough counts, no matter how small. The first time you catch a scent mid-walk, when you’re not even trying, that’s a win. Picking up the difference between citrus and spice without looking is another step forward.
Keep taking time to notice what’s changed. Maybe what once seemed like a flat haze now has more shape. Or maybe your food finally started to smell like it used to. Scent is deeply tied to emotion and memory, which makes its return more than just physical. It often brings people back to places, feelings, and connections that had been missing for a while.
This process may have starts and stops, but by staying steady with your routines and tracking your progress, you're building something meaningful. As you become more confident, explore more scents. Each new smell gives your brain another chance to relearn and reconnect. Keep going. You're doing more than sniffing a vial. You're bringing back a piece of yourself.
Rediscover the joy of scent by exploring our thoughtfully crafted smell kits designed to support your sensory journey. With a variety of natural options to choose from, MOXE is here to help you reconnect with your sense of smell in a way that feels easy, calming, and personal. Start creating a simple routine that brings results one breath at a time.