Not from Utah, but after living here for a few years, I noticed the DI has a strange smell similar to our local ward house. Yesterday I was briefly in our Mormon neighbors house and sniffed the same funny smell. Anybody else notice this? Must be a cultural thing... A mix of baby spit up, jello salad, oppression, and sticky donut fingers. Growing up our Chinese neighbors had a distinct smell, mostly from the things they cooked, and I'm sure our home smells like dirty dogs... But my point is mormons have a smell all their own.

People living in similar cultures usually do have a distinctive smell which is the result of all the different aspects of that culture: food, cleaning products chosen, cleaning products not used, other products (cosmetics, frangrances, etc.) chosen, and emotions. (Emotions contribute very heavily to any individual person's characteristic odor.)

Very probably Mormons living in Utah, and Mormons living in Hawaii (for example) have different smells from each other, but there is a commonality of smell within each of these particular groups.

Actually I lived in Hawaii for four years and the visitor center at BYU had the same funny smell. Part of it could be that Corp uses the same building materials... But that doesn't explain homes and the Mormon crap at the DI.

I also noticed that Mormon cult-meeting house and the Freemason Temples also smell the same exact way, and the style/architecture is also the same. Yes, I have been inside both, and the are uncannily alike! Hmmn?

Hmmm? Maybe the manger in Bethlehem smelled like Mormons; proving that Jesus was a Mormon. Not a Jew... But a surfer Jesus.

I thought the same thing a long time ago. My bff is Mormon and I noticed when I first started hanging out with her, that her room had a certain smell. She was the only LDS in her family, so it only found that smell in her room. When we visited other LDS friends at their house, there was the same smell. I haven't smelled that smell in over 23 years. I wonder if its all those back issues of Ensign?

I always chalked it up to people, who lived off food storage. Guess I was wrong.

Maybe the Lard has a distinct smell he bestows upon the righteous?

Maybe it's what people who don't drink beer or coffee smell like...?

Yep, that is what I always refered to as theee 'White Mormon Trash' smell. not all homes have that smell, but I could usually tell what the inside was going to smell like judging by the way the yard looked. The trashier and more neglected the yard was, the worse the smell. Now keep in mind that not all the mormon houses smelled like that, but being in the service industry for 30 years, It was a fairly good indicator as to how many kids they had, if they lived off church welfare, and that "smell".

It's like going into an old person's house. They all smell the same, no matter what part of the country it is.

No, they don't all smell, or smell the same. :rolls eyes:

Funny. Don't strain your eye rolling muscles. :)

Holy Spirit fumes.

Presbyterians smell like coffee, hand sanitizer, and hair spray.

Oh, you weren't aware that sanctimony has an odor all its own??

We got another one! Lighten up, buttercup. Your sense of humor smells stale.

The odor at the D.I. is actually the disinfectant spray they use on everything to "freshen" it before tagging and putting it out for sale. Contrary to some TBM's popular belief they do not wash anything at all there. They have some large dryers for stuff like clothes and soft toys that's supposed to help kill off things like lice but other than that it's straight outta the garbage bag and onto the hangers.

Interesting, I had assumed they washed a lot of the things in there. Otherwise it would really smell. But the disinfectant explains that.

I was forced into "volunteering" at the DI...I hated every minute. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than go thru that ever again, fortunately I never have to. I can also testify that we took clothes right outta the garbage bags, onto hangars, then hung on a rack, tagged, and sent immediately out to sales floor. We never used any type of disinfectant on ANYTHING, including shoes! Guess they didnt want to spend the money! Also, the so called manager did not like me when I was forced to be there cause I routinely took breaks when I wanted(one manager said I could whenever I wanted cause I wasn't officially an employee there) and the evilmanager knew he had ZERO so called "authority" over me...We had more than one confrontation, cause I never did anything he "told" me to. I just stood up to him to piss him off, and to give the other slaves, er ladies a show for something to gossip about...(Yeah, lets see what happens)..So, he said to me in front of everyone once rather loudly..."I'm going to call your bishop." I said "Would you like his phone number?" His response was more on his face, (I think it was cause a woman stood up to him, a "man"?) he was MAD to which I promptly replied "Whats he gonna do? Take my birthday away"? Then I ignored him and walked away. haha! SUCKER!! Dang, what a show that was!!

As poor as I am I cannot shop at the D.I. for clothes. I cannot stand the smell there. It smells like other people's clothes, and every type of laundry detergent, fabric softener, and fragrance under the sun.

that all the george forman grills had not been cleaned. I guess people just send them in dirty and they put them out dirty. I don't go in often--and I went in with my nonmo boyfriend over the holidays. I was beyond shocked.

I always thought it was because the church had a contract with a chemical company, and they used the same cleaning chemicals in every building. Just guessing.

The reason someones home might smell like that is because they spend most of their time at church, and only visit their homes to sleep. They drag the smell home with them.

I decided it was the cleaning produsts also. Cause ZCMI smelled like all the churches.
When Meir and Frank bought ZCMI the smell went away.

So if the members spend alot of time in the buildings and use the cleaning products it probably does follow them home.

FOr some reason people are not socialized to wash there clothes after use. So the smell permeates the house. If you only wear that dress or pants for 3 hours why clean them.

My hubby was raised that way and he is a never-mo.
HIs mothers house has a different funk.

I hate funk so I only wear things once.

I believe they just inhale through their nostrils like everyone else.

...and stale Cheerios. Don't forget the stale, baby-spit soaked Cheerios.

On fast sunday they do.

The local DI in Sacramento does smell. It's kind of like a dirty diaper and sweaty odor of desperation. I couldn't stand to stay in the building for long.

What do you expect, when there's an indoor gym just behind the chapel?

Add to that the smell of fat and sugar and McDonald's.

At least one dirty diaper in the trash can.

Garments slept in, or sat in for hours and hours.

Sick people.

Mormons never open their windows--srsly. They think I'm crazy to air out my house. Bugs and pollen might get in, and my heating/AC bills would skyrocket.

Like a lot of depressed people, they don't bathe often enough, and some women get their hair washed only once a week, at the beauty parlor. I prefer the smell of dog hair, frankly.

I know most mormons don't store tons of brewers yeast like my TBM mother, but the smell is the same as the older mormon wardhouses and anything from DI store.

No. Not in my experience! But the Eccles England meetinghouse did. I think it was the glue they'd used to stick the carpet half way up the walls. What a pong!

I'm serious.

Other members of the animal kingdom recognize each other and enemies by scent. Maybe some primal evolutionary thing is going on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2012 01:51PM by Twinker.

I'm surprised more people didn't recognize it as the garments.

The airline industry has jokes about it.

Your skin is an organ of elimination and it helps rid the body of poisons along with the liver, kidneys, etc. These secretions are perfectly normal and everyone has them; HOWEVER, they usually evaporate on the surface of the skin.

In warm weather, these secretions plus perspiration collect and begin to smell, as we all know. Normally, an individual would shed extra clothes and not have these layers. Because of the interference of the cult by mandating temperature-unnecessary clothing, they create a distinctive group odor.

The garment stink clings to the clothes which are worn more than once, especially since the person figures they are hardly dirty at all since they were worn over garments.

And, like all odors, when you are in it long enough and around it frequently, you no longer notice it. Like the fumes from cheap paneling, you only smell it when you come in from outside.


Anagrammy


PS. Airlines have noticed the distinctive "Mormon" odor, as have travelers. Word on the street says non-mo's are high fiving the new social networking opportunity to pick who you sit by because it also allows you to choose who to avoid.

I think you're right.
The first time I put on garments I noticed that I smelled sweaty, even though I hadn't done anything to cause it.

That was the number one reason I seldom wore garments. I felt like I was encased in a rubber suit. I would only wear them to the temple, and the tops to church. I figured it wasn't my fault they made them unwearable.

When people talk about the "crotch rot" suffered by garment-wearers, it's because of that nasty poly-blend. It is not good for your skin and espcially bad for the genital area. Putting it under another layer would make the issue much worse. Skin has to have oxygen to remain healthy.
The material does not allow the skin to breathe.

On a weird note, people from different cultures smell gross to each other. A teacher told me she had a Chinese friend that said Americans have a dairy stink about them. She had to leave a movie theater one night because the smell was so pervasive it made her ill. Vegetarians and Vegans definitely have a different odor and some can't stand the odors of people who eat meat.

I think some of it has to do with the synthetic fibers garments are made from, which doesn't allow the skin to breathe. Another thing is that some Mormons think they can wear the same clothing to church without washing it, since they only wear it for 3 hours, over garments.