Home Fragrances
Buy and sell home fragrances in Guatemala.
In most Guatemalan homes the air freshener is the Glade or Air Wick unit plugged in by the door or firing on a timer in the bathroom, and the refills are where the money goes, so a sealed box of spares is worth as much as the holder. Alongside them, new and pre-owned, come jar candles, reed diffusers and ultrasonic diffusers, and the copal pom and clay censers that perfumed a house long before any of those. A Christmas gift set that was never opened, or a diffuser that never suited the room, is exactly the kind of thing worth passing on.
Copal pom and the cohune palm flower:
the oldest home fragrance in Guatemala is a lump of copal resin burnt on a coal in a clay censer, the smoke that hangs over the Semana Santa processions in Antigua. It is heavy, it works its way into fabric, and a small piece fills a closed room. The cohune palm is the seasonal one: its flower comes into the markets during Lent and scents a room until it dries out. A stick sold as copal incense is a scented stick, not the resin, and it smells nothing like it. Day to day, most homes skip the flame. A plug-in warms a small bottle of scented oil, and an automatic spray runs on batteries and fires an aerosol on a timer. Glade and Air Wick both make them, and each brand’s refills fit only its own holder. A reed diffuser needs no power at all. An ultrasonic diffuser turns water and a little oil into a cool mist, while a nebuliser atomises the oil neat and gets through it faster. A candle warmer lamp melts a jar from the top without lighting the wick, and those lamps sit with lighting.
Where a candle beats a plug-in, and where it does not:
it comes down to the room and who is in it. A candle or burning pom wants someone present and a shelf well clear of fabric, and the smoke from either ends up in the curtains and blinds over time. Plug-ins and automatic sprays suit a bathroom or a hallway nobody sits in. Turning a diffuser’s reeds freshens them, and once they clog they need replacing. An ultrasonic diffuser puts moisture into the air as it runs, which suits a bedroom better than a bathroom that already fogs up. Beeswax and soy burn slower than plain paraffin, while paraffin throws scent further across a big living room. A unit brought back from the United States runs on the same sockets as here, so the only question is whether its refills are sold in Guatemala.
Air freshener refills and jar candles on the shelf:
a can of aerosol or a plug-in refill costs around Q35 to Q50 in a supermarket, and a holder often comes thrown in with the first refill, which is why an empty Glade or Air Wick unit is worth almost nothing alone and a box of sealed refills that fits it is the bundle worth listing. Jar candles run from about Q15 for a small one to Q70 or more for a large jar, and once one has been burnt a third of the way down, its price follows the jar rather than the wax.
Testing a secondhand diffuser before you carry it home:
ask to see it running. The small disc at the bottom of an ultrasonic tank scales up with tap water and the mist goes weak, and a cloudy or crazed tank means neat citrus oil has been eating the plastic. On an automatic spray, check the battery contacts for green corrosion. Candles lose scent as they age even unlit, so an old gift-set candle can look perfect and smell of very little; a tunnel burnt down the middle and a cracked jar are the faults you can see. Opened essential oils are the weakest buy: look for dark glass, a botanical name on the label and an intact seal, and treat a bottle sold as pure essential oil at the price of a fragrance oil as a fragrance oil.
Listing a gift set that never left its cellophane:
photograph the seal, say plainly whether a candle has been lit, and name the exact refill system so a buyer knows which holder it fits. For a diffuser, a short clip of it misting answers more than any description. Say where candles were stored, since wax that has sat somewhere hot can frost or lean. A buyer coming in from Cobán or Chimaltenango for a box of refills wants to know, before setting off, that they fit the holder already on the wall at home.