last call at the washing machine

many of my favourite products have been discontinued in recent years. scents or flavours or varieties i've loved keep vanishing from store shelves seemingly overnight.

shampoos, conditioners, lotions, soaps, deodorants, detergents, fabric softeners, ice cream, chips, cookies, beverages... pretty much anything manufactured. even maxi pads, fer cryin' out loud! it's hard to be brand loyal to anything when brands keep needlessly switching up their product lines every three to five years. i've lost count of how many times TIDE has changed its scent, or how many different types of deodorant i've used in my life, or how often i've gone shopping to pick up a refill of whatever, only to discover to my profound horror that its spot on the shelf has been taken away and yet another item has been added to the "nope, we don't make that anymore" list.

sometimes, when i get a whiff that a product might be discontinued (as in: supply seems to be dwindling or disappearing), i race around and scramble to stock up with as much as i can before it's gone. i did this back in the early 2000s when the fleecy brand of fabric softener – which my grandmother, mother and i had used since i was born – suddenly changed its fragrance. it hadn't changed for decades, but someone somewhere thought it needed a "refresh." the new scent was like strong cologne and i haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated it instantly.

i'm super-sensitive to scent and even more particular when it comes to which fragrances i like. or love. original-scent fleecy falls squarely into the LOVE category. love love love.

so, at the time (i think it was probably around 2001) and knowing how important fragrance is when it comes to my laundry, YB and i went looking for big bottles of the original scent. it was challenging: the old scent was called "fresh fragrance" on the label, and the new version was called "fresh air." a fine line, but a crucial one.

after searching through umpteen stores without success, we hit the motherlode: a zellers (ironically, a store chain that has also vanished in the years since) had some classic scent left and i bought EVERY SINGLE BOTTLE.

the actual last bottle i have

each bottle was more than 3L in volume, and i think i bought ten of them. maybe 12, maybe nine. i don't remember the exact number anymore. but i do know it was every one they had, and that i marked each one "vickie's magic blend" in sharpie before storing them in my parents' basement, lest they be used by anyone else by accident.

and i wasn't able to find any more (not even ONE bottle) at any other stores thereafter. i did manage to find a couple of boxes of the "fresh fragrance" dryer sheets, but even those were yanked from shelves pretty quickly. i felt like i was some kind of bizarre laundry conservationist, working to preserve the essence of (literally and figuratively) of loads gone by.

in the nearly two decades since, i've carefully rationed that fleecy, using it only for bedding because that's what i associate most with the fragrance. it's a familiar, cozy, comforting scent that i will forever associate with childhood and sleep, even though everything i owned was rinsed in it for many, many years. i wasn't as sparing as i could have been at the outset, using the full amount per load for numerous loads. it's only in the past six or seven years that i started mixing the fleecy with other fabric softeners as a way to extend its rapidly dwindling life.

as of this blog post, i still have about 2/3 of a box of the sheets left (i'm saving those for last – the open box currently sits in my linen closet, infusing it with fleecy-smelling goodness) – but my very last surviving bottle of the liquid is almost empty. i'd say i have about half a cup remaining.

HALF A CUP.

and then it will be gone.

forever.

after almost 50 years of that fragrance being a part of my life, it's quickly coming to an end.

i've taken to using just over a tablespoon per load – again, only bedding – and mixing it with downy (another fabric softener whose original scent was long ago replaced with a poor-but-tolerable substitute) + a store-brand dryer sheet, all in a bid to stretch those last remaining drops of fleecy as far as they can possibly be stretched.

remarkably, and perhaps as a testament to why i love it so much, the fleecy liquid did not deteriorate in quality, consistency OR scent after all these years. it still works and smells exactly the same as it always did! (by contrast: bottles of downy will congeal into unusable, unpourable, undissolve-able glop if not used within about a year. i learned this the hard way more than once.)

it's all hugely depressing, if i'm being honest. i know it might seem silly – after all, it's fabric softener! – but it's like a big part of my life will evaporate when i pour that final tablespoon into the rinse water. the smell of fleecy is home. it's my mom. it's bedtime. it's all things good and warm and known. *sigh*

and i'm about three loads from it ceasing to exist.

but i am impressed that i somehow managed to make those bottles i scored almost 20 years (!) ago last as long as they did. that final load will be be sad, i think.