Es sind nicht nur Sie: Haushaltsproduktdüfte werden stärker

*Big brands know that fragrances are deeply tied to memory and emotion.*

*Madison Darbyshire for Bloomberg News*

It was a day like any other until I ran out of soap. My value-size bottle of Dawn dish soap had seen me through three years of scrubbing cereal bowls and teaspoons. I didn’t know they were the last years I’d know true dish-soap contentment.

I went to the store to buy another triennial supply, only to find the bottles now carried a yellow sticker: “New Clean Scent.” (Surely, Dawn — a soap — has always smelled “clean”?)

The new stuff worked. It sudsed. But the smell was cloying and much more powerful. It hit me between the eyeballs like a champagne headache and clung to my hands for hours after I washed my favorite Mets souvenir cup. Naturally, I panicked.

Turning online for answers, I found the comment section of Target’s website full of other grieving consumers. Dawn’s X account, fielding complaints, revealed the brand had changed the fragrance in its original formula a few months earlier, in February 2024. Customers on Reddit came not to lament the loss of an effective staple — Dawn still cleaned well, still boasted 50% less scrubbing than the competition — but simply to mourn change.

In some cases, the change meant customers, some of whom had been loyal for decades, could no longer wash their dishes without breaking out in rashes, feeling nauseated or getting migraines, they wrote. In replies to complaints about the new scent, Dawn’s customer care team wrote: “As you can imagine, we weren’t going for a portapotty scent.”

This, from the dish soap so famously gentle and non-irritating that it was used to clean baby ducks in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. What we all wanted to know was, *Why??*

[Read the full essay here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-05/why-does-your-dish-soap-smell-different-blame-us-mania-for-newness?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1NzI0NjYyMiwiZXhwIjoxNzU3ODUxNDIyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUMjQzV0lHUEZIU0UwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.O_nEtQj3vwzosnkMlD41jpNVI-VuqQbplrEmE6ClBwI)

Oh the headaches the fragrances give me, migraine after migraine. Even when marked unscented, read the list of ingredients, it will often have perfume added

I don’t buy scented products in general.