Avoiding gruesome odors is my first line of defense. There’s a coffee shop nearby that I simply won’t enter. It’s jam-packed with wooden barrels of reeking coffee beans; locals complain they can smell the roasting blocks away. I send my husband to buy coffee while I wait in the car with the windows up.

I’ve tried the opposite tactic, going out of my way to imprint favorite perfumes, fresh flowers, that wonderful bakery smell. Alas, my phantosmia specializes in the disagreeable.

— Columnist Jane G Andrews in A Pungent Life: The Smells in My Head at The New York Times. Many thanks to contrabassa for the link!