How do you use the "Tested" feature?

For me, I use it to keep a history of the fragrances I own/wear on a regular basis - rather than keeping a list of all of the fragrances I've tested/sampled (I keep a separate "shelf" on Parfumo to track those). 

Curious to hear how others approach it!

I use it for all frags that I've tested on my skin, but I also only include fragrances I actually tested on skin in my collections, so... Uh. I guess I just use it for all my frags, lol.

@Ursaw haha I understand what you mean! I can see how that could sound like a redundant option 😅 but I personally differentiate between fragrances I briefly sample on paper or skin (and then wash off of my skin because I hate it), vs. fragrances I do a full wear of on my skin if that makes sense.

I hope to limit my collection in the future to only the best perfumes for each of the notes and profiles that I enjoy. For example, for roses, I've decided there are three types of profiles I like, so I should have only three rose perfumes, the best for each profile. Looking back at the Tested feature, helps me to decide what I like the most and helps me to avoid impulse purchases.

@Raluko111 that's a thoughtful approach to curating what you keep, to make sure it's only the best of the best. And I completely agree that looking back at the Tested feature could help in figuring out what you actually enjoy, to make more informed purchasing decisions!

I just register them as 'tested' and if I liked them enough to have bought them, I will also register them as 'I have'. 

I mostly ignore it ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I've sampled a ton of fragrances before I ever found this website and I'm not about to add them all to the tab. They get added automatically when I wear them and that's about it. 

@Gourmandgrl
That's fair, but I'm personally still at the point where I try to give all frags I try at least some time to blossom. If I just dislike something, I usually still give it a full day of wear for fair review purposes. Now if I wear something for an hour or two and through the whole time genuinely hate it... Ah well!

At that point I feel that I gave the frag a fair test of quality and it just miserably failed it. Granted, that doesn't happen too often. If I had a viscerally negative reaction to more perfumes, I'd probably give up on this hobby by now, but luckily most things tend to just fall in the "meh" category for me, lol.

I used to only use it for stuff I tested on skin but didn't want to buy, whether disliked or neutral.

Since I've been using the logging feature (which automatically marks stuff as tested), I now use it for anything I've worn at all. I also have a separate folder for dislikes, so I can figure out any common themes. If I test something on paper and want to try it on skin eventually, then it goes into my watchlist.

(Also this is a very interesting topic, I like hearing about how people organise their collections here) 

To join my "tested" list, a perfume have to be worn at last a full day. A paper test or a quick spray on the wrist in a shop is not enough to join my list. 

But of course, I am crazy enough to buy a perfume after a simple wrist spray.

My testing process begins with a spray on paper. If I don't like it on paper, I'm not going to give it a chance on skin. I use the "tested" feature to mark everything I've tested on paper, but I have a separate collection for fragrances I've tested on strip that I liked and want to get a decant for. If a fragrance I tested on paper doesn't end up in that collection, I know that I didn't like it on paper, so chances are I'm not going to try it again.

I test the same exact way: if a fragrance isn't appealing to me first on paper, I won't test it on my skin either. No use subjecting myself for a longer period of time to something I already know I don't enjoy! 😅

@EvitaVilla I've previously bought a fragrance after a simple wrist spray too, and learned the hard way that I can't trust my skin chemistry/must wait for a full wear (or I may regret the dry-down haha)! 🙈

@SilverLily I agree, always enjoy hearing how other people approach different features/their collections - no one "right" way to do it, plus the chance of learning a better way!

@Ursaw very fair approach! I will keep out a test strip for a day for the same purpose (to revisit/see how things develop over time), but I am particular enough about different notes that I can't stand putting it on my skin, if something is off-putting already on paper for me. I'm impressed at your dedication to a full wear on your skin, regardless of personal preference!

@MorganleFay I hear you - copying info over is not always an easy task! 😅 

@Ringtale that is a simple and efficient way of approaching it, I appreciate how straightforward it is!

If I've tested it on my skin, I mark it as tested.

It's possible I'll change that in the future because I can't decide on the best way to organize my collection, and switch it up every few months. But so far, that category hasn't been subjected to my neurotic behavior 🙈

When I wear a perfume, I tag it with the tracker. Automatically it’s added to the “tested” folder but I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

What Ceesie says. When you use the spray on feature in the Tracker the perfume gets automatically added to the Tested folder if it's not already in there. l don't do anything with that folder. I keep on using the Tracker because it's useful for me to find out when the last time I wore a fragrance or how many times I've worn it, etc.

I use the 'tested' category as a marker of fragrances that I have worn fully (as in more than one spray, and my main scent of the day.) This includes both decants and full bottles, so long as I have worn the fragrance. It also tells me which fragrances I need to write a review on, as I only write reviews on fragrances that I have fully worn more than once or twice.

I have a separate category for fragrances that I have just sampled or smelled, whether it be on paper or on skin. These are the ones that I smell in store and only have brief opinions on. I typically write statements for these fragrances as 99% of the time I am not fully wearing these thus I feel like I have no grounds for a full review.

I use it to refer all the perfumes I have at least sprayed on paper, but I spray every perfume on my wrist at some point, even the ones I disliked on paper, mostly out of curiosity to see the improvements, or in some rare cases, the opposite.
After the wrist test I automatically put in on the adequate shelve to keep a proper tracking, and proper testing if needed.

I must say that personally I passionately hate the whole feature 😂 I'm a hopeless perfectionist so I would have to mark every single perfume I have ever tested during my whole life as "tested" and that would mean something like 2,000+ fragrances and would be absolutely exhausting to do 😝 So I have decided not to use the feature at all. It's one of the most annoying things in Parfumo that every single time when I'm clicking "spray on" it's marking the perfume automatically as "tested", I hate it so much that I couldn't turn the automatical tested thing off and have to remove it manually every time. So my answer to the question of the thread is that I'm not using it at all and never will.

I agree with you… I did exactly the same … thinking about it I would use it to mention the very old and rare I’ve tested or all the decants of unknown parfume I will never buy 😅

@Lempi that is so funny you hate it haha 😂 but I hear your reasonings for that, and I understand. Not everyone will approach it same way (which is why I was curious to see how others do it). There is no right or wrong way!

I like the "Tested" feature for seeing timestamps, years at a glance, and frequency tracking of the fragrances I wear regularly. But I use a separate shelf to track all of the fragrances I've sampled! 

I love tracking all of them through a shelf instead of the "Tested" feature - because then I can use the "Advanced Search" on the shelf, to narrow down by brand, notes, etc.!

If you don't track all the fragrances you've sampled, do you just recall which ones through memory? I have to have them written down somewhere... or I would probably end up ordering the same samples again and again! 😆🙈

@Gourmandgrl That's actually a great question because I hadn't given too much thought to it previously 😄 About 10 years ago I still used to sample a lot and I also swapped a lot so I got tons of samples via swaps. Back then I was still very active at Fragrantica and used to rate there all perfumes that I tested. However very few of them ended up on my wantlist. Currently I have saved all the decants that I really enjoy and will transfer those fragrances on my wantlist when I have finished the decant (if I ever will, decants usually last ages in my collection). If I test in a store, I will add the perfume on my wantlist if I enjoyed it a lot or if I want to test it again. (I actually currently keep my up-to-date wantlist at Sniff as it's the fragrance app that I use coexisting with my Parfumo account.) Ordering samples in my country is either really difficult or expensive so I don't really see any point doing it anymore. Nowadays when my collection is quite large it's also relatively rare that I would get super interested of a certain fragrance as I might have something similar in my collection already, however if I get interested of something that can't be tested in any local physical stores or airports, I will try to get a sample, or after a thorough research do a blind purchase because that's sometimes easier and even cheaper (depending on the fragrance of course but mostly I'm not interested in expensive niches). So I'm just not testing so much nowadays and all the ones that I have tested in the past and that I have really loved I have already bought or transfered on my wantlist. Thus I'm not really needing the "tested" feature at the moment I guess. 😅

Exactly me as well.  I would likely never use Tested, however....I could see tracking such a thing to understand things I've "tested" but haven't worn for the scent of the day.  In my tracker, by day, is my scent of the day, but admittedly, I "test" some things either early morning before showers, or late at night when everything has worn off.  Sometimes, I also like to randomly pull from my "test" group (not bottles, just samples) and not look at what it is, and spray it on and try to figure out what it is.  I would say I get about 70% right lol.