Productivity Guy chimes in. I knew there was a reason to hate Big Deodorant:

Jonah – I would guess America smells better than ever, even before the air fresheners are installed. Do you think the indoors were cleaner and fresher back when more men had blue collar jobs (and thus more sweat drenched shirts and socks) and kids spent more time outside than in front of video games? Not to mention that houses were generally smaller and had less open floor plans, so pungency was more contained.
I would say that the emergence of the home air freshener market is another example of America’s growing prosperity – as people get richer, they discover demands they didn’t even know they had before. Back in college, I remember a particularly fragrant old hippie who used to complain about people spending money on deodorant – he claimed this was a totally manufactured demand, and before the deodorant moguls made people feel bad nobody cared about the way they smelled (he certainly didn’t). More reasonable people thought the reduction in body odor was a positive step forward for civilization. Home air fresheners seems to be an extension of the same basic idea – as people get more money, they get more concerned with hygiene and generally cleaning things up. A cynic might even say that this same idea applies to the environment more broadly…
I bet you get a ton of e-mail on this.