My wife is sensitive to perfumes, and I just plain don't like them, so I don't buy anything that has a scent to it. You have to be careful, since products have a tendency to do one of those "new and improved" things where suddenly they stink.

Our soap dispensers use a "green" dish soap with 50 percent water. Ivory soap. Unscented deodorant. Tide Free. And of course, none of those silly dryer sheets.

It took a while to find shampoos that she could deal with since there is apparently no such thing as a shampoo that doesn't smell like SOMETHING. Trader Joe's herbal is pretty good--she doesn't mind things that have a gentle, natural smell.

I remember we used to use a shampoo that was sort of an almond thing. I was using it when we camped at Yosemite, and I was kind of suspicious that my wife would send me on errands to the central camp facility after dark, walking through bear country smelling exactly like some kind of cookie.

We have gotten things for gifts that have to hit the dumpster fairly soon. I don't understand why everything has to smell like something.

Don't worry. Your natural defenses against complex compounds are pretty damn good. Nature has millions of compounds of all types, many more complex than anything out of a lab, and living organisms adapt pretty well to dealing with new ones (not all of them, of course, by a long shot. If you're hunting mushrooms, take an expert along) Nature is coming up with new stuff all the time, and you can change your environment completely by simply moving from a savannah to a rain forest, so your liver has to be pretty flexible.