Actually, I think most smells in the morning are excessive-even toast. Orange juice is too acidic; milk, too sour. Eggs and bacon? They overwhelm everything else. You might as well be cooking the whole animal out there. I like tea, though. The aroma is subtle, but never obtrusive.
I've always had this really weird attachment to and fascination with smell. Smells make incredibly strong connections in my mind; any place I've been to for any length of time is recalled by its defining smell, however peripheral it is to the location.
I can't help but catch the smell of books and magazines before I read them. If I don't like it then, I probably won't like it halfway through. As soon as you pick up a book or magazine, the smell's all over your hands, whether you like it or not. (I'm obviously not going to stop breathing through my nose just for the convenience of protecting my sensitive senses.)
When I sit down it looks like I'm rubbing my nose a lot, but I'm actually smelling the back of my hand; it keeps me connected to the physical world.
You can easily zone out and not hear or see anything that's going on around you, but you can't escape smell. It's not possible to filter it out in the same way, unless you suppress the sense altogether. I wash my hands regularly not just for hygiene but to keep them smelling relatively consistent.
I think for most people, when they think of someone they're close to, imagine their faces or bodies first (something visual), then the sounds of their voices (auditory), and for someone they're intimate with maybe a physical touch sensation of some sort. Obviously, I don't get close enough (physically) to most people to be able to smell them, but if I can connect a smell with someone, that will automatically supersede any other connection I make with that person's identity. It doesn't matter that most smells are artificial and vary wildly from day to day.
And true, most people don't smell that great. It's not that, though. Rather than "good" or "bad" smells, I associate ANY smell with whatever connotation I already have with that person. Unless it's really bad, I will like the smells of people I like and dislike the smells of people I dislike-the association of smells changes to accommodate my opinions of the people who have them.
The only exception to this is perfume and cologne. I can't stand the stuff. Most of them smell horrible and even the good ones bother me intensely. It totally masks your actual scent and overwhelms everything else with your noxious vapors. It's really quite awful.
The only reason why I can strongly identify with scents at all is that my sense of smell is exceedingly sensitive. And perfume is olfactory overkill. It's an ambulance siren at a chamber music concert. I have a feeling that people who use those things can't smell very well; why else would they be wearing the olfactory equivalent of a fluorescent pink shirt with glitter and jewelry hanging off it?
Of course most people smell like crap to begin with, so it's probably a sensible policy to do something about it. But our culture promotes disguising smell over good hygiene. The solution to smelling like an unlaundered sock is to take more showers, not cover everything with deodorant and cologne. Maybe I'm biased because I don't sweat much, but body odor is a function of poor diet and poor hygiene. There's no need to overcompensate just because you're unclean. It's like spraying fragrance over a landfill. I feel the same way about scented shampoos.
But people are just one part of the picture. Most smells are environmental and typically organic-the real stuff is outside. There are, of course, good socio-biological reasons why this is true; we've evolved to be sensitive toward the smells of living things, as this ability had a significant adaptive function in our human history.
Most people don't think about all this, though. Most smells are boring and routine, and we're more likely to be disgusted by new smells than pleasantly surprised. But when I can connect smells to something new, that's when I feel really good about being able to experience that.
Get out and smell some things sometime. It's worth it.