Obsessed with this. Thank you for sharing! I would definitely add date smelled, weather that day (because climate and season massively affects first impressions and scent evolution for me), and where I smelled it (more and more I find that if it’s a store, that can have a major influence on the experience — especially if it’s cramped, noisy or unwelcoming). In recent times I’ve been re-sampling scents I once rejected or slowly learning new notes and this date/season/context data is helpful in identifying what changed when with my nose, my outlook, and my relationship with perfume as an art form.
Would love to see an update on your process in the future and to hear about its evolution.
Great system. I esp. like the family category. It usually comes out in the desc. field. Do you use a standardized list for this (Edwards, Art and olfaction, Aftel) or your own? I go lighter and use sheets with a form app (looks like a survey) on my phone. My fileds are: Name, House, concentration, Date of release, short desc. (a la Turin), long desc., stars to 5, todays date, and will be adding perfumer soon.
I like the form concept! Are you running through google or MSForms, etc?
I started with the FOTW fragrance wheel categories for my 'families', but quickly found that frustrating as I wanted categories like gourmand that haven't 'spun out' into their own families yet.
My entire family list includes: Musk, Floral, Soft Floral, Woody Floral, Floral Amber, Amber, Gourmand, Woody Amber, Woody, Chypre, Dry Woods, Fougère, Citrus, Fruity, Green, Aquatic.
I use google forms and just have a link/icon on my phone. In your system you might still have to add color after the fact in the sheet. I use my notes app as the notebook.
Your family list is pretty comprehensive. I might have to add this as a column. Do you allow combos such as green chypre?
Hi Brian, I do like to rock a pencil on occasion too - though sometimes I scrawl too faintly with them! I will spray as much as possible in visit and couldn't imagine restraining myself to just three...
Thank you for this! I’m very new to the perfume world and having something like this will definitely help the exploration of different scents I’m venturing into this year.
Thanks a million. You’ve just course corrected my perfume collection that’s been growing without any consistent organized tracking or personal notes — giving me SO MUCH anxiety!
I’ve got my own google sheet (I’m gonna add yours — more exciting!) & I was of course using Fragrantica — but, no notes, no journal. Scent strips floating around, yes; tons of thoughts in my head, also YES.
👍 adding ‘date smelled’ would be key for revisiting your journal notes 📝 (Do you keep them, your journals? After entering the notes in the database?)
OH MY GOSH can’t thank you enough!! Pls share more on this subj - if you feel like you pulled back! LOVE IT!!
Building a system for yourself will definitely take away some of that 'blotters in the wind' anxiety! Iterate as you go and you'll find a good rhythm. I do indeed keep my notebooks and often bookmark blotters in between the pages so they smell quite lovely upon revisit!
We might return to the Spreadsheet and discuss other tabs/notebooks in future newsletters too :).
“What’s That Smell?” the title of my journal, collections of my daily wears & scent experiences, has henceforth begun in just a simple composition notebook 📓 Tuck in scent strips? Love your ideas👌Yes, please share more on any of this topic! — notebooks, tabs, etc whatever your heart wants to share …I’m just hopeful to keep going & growing the habit of this writing ✍️
I love this! I keep a perfume spreadsheet too! I track what I have in my collection and keep a daily wear log but mostly it’s another seeing patterns in my wearing and spending behaviour! (hence my substack name- smells like money.) I have a few perfume behaviour related hypotheses which I’m waiting to test haha. I do monthly write ups, here’s one from last month! https://smellslikemoney.substack.com/p/decants-and-dollars-may-2025?r=aozj4
I’ve also used notion for perfume before and it can be VERY sophisticated as a database. Happy to give you a crash course or a screen recording of mine any time.
I also create a sort of 'spotify wrapped' for myself using my spreadsheet at the end of the year, I love your setup! I like Notion a lot but I do worry about the cloud based recall for spreadsheets/data - I use it for lighter touch things like my 'digital library' but the Spreadsheet is so huge now!
What I like about Notion as a knowledge base (rather than tracking $) is:
1. being able to change the views
2. way better sort/view options using the custom fields.
when I started out I used notion to track what I had/wanted and profiles/key notes so when I wanted to, for example, see what was on my wishlist with notes x and y, I could. It definitely helped me follow my curiosity more mindfully and also not buy things that were super similar!
Also this is personal but I HATE lots of texts in spreadsheets.
Sweet. I always like seeing people champion tracking and cataloging their collections. It's not only a great way to look at patterns and use, but also helps with being a more careful consumer. I use a spreadsheet, but I try to keep it balanced between enough data to be useful and not too much to where it's getting bogged down (for example - I don't worry about release dates, perfumers, etc when this info is easily accessible on database websites).
On my bottle collection page, I just have name, house, rating (out of 5, but I also have 6 for extra special ones), category (arbitrary based on my gut), size of the bottle I have, seasons it works best for, wear count tracker (i have a separate page in the sheet that is just a long list of dates where i track my daily wears. A countif formula automatically counts wears and populate on my collection page), a sort of status/rebuy column (yes, no, for sale, discontinued), and then a general notes area. I've tossed around the idea of adding a 'fragrance notes' column, but it would get a little wild. Parfumo has a 'profiler' function on their collection pages that will immediately show you the most frequently occurring notes from your collection without needing to deal with filters and such in a spreadsheet, so I defer to that.
For samples, I have a totally different page on my sheet with much of the same info, but I don't bother with seasons, size, wear count and instead focus on whether its a to buy, a revisit, or a no. For things not going in the to-buy or revisit, I decide whether or not I want to keep them for reference or sell/trade (usually referencing my scores. Things with 1-2/5 go to the sell/trade pile). I have a drop down for categories for where I want to put them in my storage drawers (they are all labeled with categories that match the sheet), this way if I need to quickly find one to reference I know what drawer to go to immediately. Initially I had samples on the same page as my full bottles but I needed different information for the samples so it just made more sense to split them.
Lastly, I have a page for all of my 'to try' things that I want to eventually try. It's incredibly basic with just name, house, notes. Often, it's just 'discovery kit' from XXX.
I don't currently track prices/cost/sales, though now that I am selling things more frequently to cull out my collection, I probably should for tax purposes in case I get audited!
Love this post! I also track my perfumes but don’t bother w release date or designer vs niche. I do note the perfumer as I like to see patterns from that perspective. I just have a yes/no/maybe rating for likelihood of buying a full button and I do make distinction of whether I smelled on skin or test strip. I use Evernote app with a custom template and tag by perfumer, house, category, and rating.
As a person who builds quick-and-dirty comparison spreadsheets for every little thing i happen to be looking up or wanting to buy - this is so satisfying to look at. Yours is *art*!
I'm pretty early in my perfume hobby, but this looks like glorious tinker-y fun.
(I think I've seen you mention in an earlier newsletter that you're in Sydney? I'm in semi-rural Vic, so slightly harder to get access to a lot of perfumes - do you have any suggestions/warnings for reputable places for individual samples, maybe?
I'm a member of a few private FB groups, but I can feel I've got the sheen of 'Deceivable Newbie' on me. 😅 Makes me hesitant to buy anything from anywhere online.)
It's great not to be alone! I have had a spreadsheet since I started and my friends who work in some of my favorite shops always laughed about it when I consulted it in their store. :-)
Obsessed with this. Thank you for sharing! I would definitely add date smelled, weather that day (because climate and season massively affects first impressions and scent evolution for me), and where I smelled it (more and more I find that if it’s a store, that can have a major influence on the experience — especially if it’s cramped, noisy or unwelcoming). In recent times I’ve been re-sampling scents I once rejected or slowly learning new notes and this date/season/context data is helpful in identifying what changed when with my nose, my outlook, and my relationship with perfume as an art form.
Would love to see an update on your process in the future and to hear about its evolution.
Great system. I esp. like the family category. It usually comes out in the desc. field. Do you use a standardized list for this (Edwards, Art and olfaction, Aftel) or your own? I go lighter and use sheets with a form app (looks like a survey) on my phone. My fileds are: Name, House, concentration, Date of release, short desc. (a la Turin), long desc., stars to 5, todays date, and will be adding perfumer soon.
I like the form concept! Are you running through google or MSForms, etc?
I started with the FOTW fragrance wheel categories for my 'families', but quickly found that frustrating as I wanted categories like gourmand that haven't 'spun out' into their own families yet.
My entire family list includes: Musk, Floral, Soft Floral, Woody Floral, Floral Amber, Amber, Gourmand, Woody Amber, Woody, Chypre, Dry Woods, Fougère, Citrus, Fruity, Green, Aquatic.
I use google forms and just have a link/icon on my phone. In your system you might still have to add color after the fact in the sheet. I use my notes app as the notebook.
Your family list is pretty comprehensive. I might have to add this as a column. Do you allow combos such as green chypre?
What a gift, thank you for sharing!
As a fellow data person, I've also spent a while building my own tracking spreadsheets. Definitely gonna steal a few of your ideas. :)
Hi
Just a couple of thoughts on sampling :
Ball point ink smells, I use pencil if there's one lying about
Three is my limit when sampling in a shop, more than that and it's easy to get nose foggy
You can make good blotters from acid free art paper.
Bibi
Hi Brian, I do like to rock a pencil on occasion too - though sometimes I scrawl too faintly with them! I will spray as much as possible in visit and couldn't imagine restraining myself to just three...
Thank you for this! I’m very new to the perfume world and having something like this will definitely help the exploration of different scents I’m venturing into this year.
Thanks a million. You’ve just course corrected my perfume collection that’s been growing without any consistent organized tracking or personal notes — giving me SO MUCH anxiety!
I’ve got my own google sheet (I’m gonna add yours — more exciting!) & I was of course using Fragrantica — but, no notes, no journal. Scent strips floating around, yes; tons of thoughts in my head, also YES.
👍 adding ‘date smelled’ would be key for revisiting your journal notes 📝 (Do you keep them, your journals? After entering the notes in the database?)
OH MY GOSH can’t thank you enough!! Pls share more on this subj - if you feel like you pulled back! LOVE IT!!
Building a system for yourself will definitely take away some of that 'blotters in the wind' anxiety! Iterate as you go and you'll find a good rhythm. I do indeed keep my notebooks and often bookmark blotters in between the pages so they smell quite lovely upon revisit!
We might return to the Spreadsheet and discuss other tabs/notebooks in future newsletters too :).
“What’s That Smell?” the title of my journal, collections of my daily wears & scent experiences, has henceforth begun in just a simple composition notebook 📓 Tuck in scent strips? Love your ideas👌Yes, please share more on any of this topic! — notebooks, tabs, etc whatever your heart wants to share …I’m just hopeful to keep going & growing the habit of this writing ✍️
I love this! I keep a perfume spreadsheet too! I track what I have in my collection and keep a daily wear log but mostly it’s another seeing patterns in my wearing and spending behaviour! (hence my substack name- smells like money.) I have a few perfume behaviour related hypotheses which I’m waiting to test haha. I do monthly write ups, here’s one from last month! https://smellslikemoney.substack.com/p/decants-and-dollars-may-2025?r=aozj4
I’ve also used notion for perfume before and it can be VERY sophisticated as a database. Happy to give you a crash course or a screen recording of mine any time.
I also create a sort of 'spotify wrapped' for myself using my spreadsheet at the end of the year, I love your setup! I like Notion a lot but I do worry about the cloud based recall for spreadsheets/data - I use it for lighter touch things like my 'digital library' but the Spreadsheet is so huge now!
What I like about Notion as a knowledge base (rather than tracking $) is:
1. being able to change the views
2. way better sort/view options using the custom fields.
when I started out I used notion to track what I had/wanted and profiles/key notes so when I wanted to, for example, see what was on my wishlist with notes x and y, I could. It definitely helped me follow my curiosity more mindfully and also not buy things that were super similar!
Also this is personal but I HATE lots of texts in spreadsheets.
Sweet. I always like seeing people champion tracking and cataloging their collections. It's not only a great way to look at patterns and use, but also helps with being a more careful consumer. I use a spreadsheet, but I try to keep it balanced between enough data to be useful and not too much to where it's getting bogged down (for example - I don't worry about release dates, perfumers, etc when this info is easily accessible on database websites).
On my bottle collection page, I just have name, house, rating (out of 5, but I also have 6 for extra special ones), category (arbitrary based on my gut), size of the bottle I have, seasons it works best for, wear count tracker (i have a separate page in the sheet that is just a long list of dates where i track my daily wears. A countif formula automatically counts wears and populate on my collection page), a sort of status/rebuy column (yes, no, for sale, discontinued), and then a general notes area. I've tossed around the idea of adding a 'fragrance notes' column, but it would get a little wild. Parfumo has a 'profiler' function on their collection pages that will immediately show you the most frequently occurring notes from your collection without needing to deal with filters and such in a spreadsheet, so I defer to that.
For samples, I have a totally different page on my sheet with much of the same info, but I don't bother with seasons, size, wear count and instead focus on whether its a to buy, a revisit, or a no. For things not going in the to-buy or revisit, I decide whether or not I want to keep them for reference or sell/trade (usually referencing my scores. Things with 1-2/5 go to the sell/trade pile). I have a drop down for categories for where I want to put them in my storage drawers (they are all labeled with categories that match the sheet), this way if I need to quickly find one to reference I know what drawer to go to immediately. Initially I had samples on the same page as my full bottles but I needed different information for the samples so it just made more sense to split them.
Lastly, I have a page for all of my 'to try' things that I want to eventually try. It's incredibly basic with just name, house, notes. Often, it's just 'discovery kit' from XXX.
I don't currently track prices/cost/sales, though now that I am selling things more frequently to cull out my collection, I probably should for tax purposes in case I get audited!
Love this post! I also track my perfumes but don’t bother w release date or designer vs niche. I do note the perfumer as I like to see patterns from that perspective. I just have a yes/no/maybe rating for likelihood of buying a full button and I do make distinction of whether I smelled on skin or test strip. I use Evernote app with a custom template and tag by perfumer, house, category, and rating.
I'm shocked at just how similar our perfume trackers are. Kindred spirits!
Thanks for the great resource and breakdown!
As a person who builds quick-and-dirty comparison spreadsheets for every little thing i happen to be looking up or wanting to buy - this is so satisfying to look at. Yours is *art*!
I'm pretty early in my perfume hobby, but this looks like glorious tinker-y fun.
(I think I've seen you mention in an earlier newsletter that you're in Sydney? I'm in semi-rural Vic, so slightly harder to get access to a lot of perfumes - do you have any suggestions/warnings for reputable places for individual samples, maybe?
I'm a member of a few private FB groups, but I can feel I've got the sheen of 'Deceivable Newbie' on me. 😅 Makes me hesitant to buy anything from anywhere online.)
It's great not to be alone! I have had a spreadsheet since I started and my friends who work in some of my favorite shops always laughed about it when I consulted it in their store. :-)
I will try this one for sure!