Using Essential Oils at Home

Essential oils can pack a lot of aromatherapy power. By using essential oils you can add pleasant scents to your home, shift your mood, and ease minor physical complaints. Consider some of the many ways you can put essential oils to work at home:

1. Add fragrance to your home. Essential oils can offer a scent boost to your home that’s completely natural. This natural air freshener can be placed in a diffuser to spread the scent through an area of your home. Consider changing scents based on your mood or season, such as lavender when you want to feel more calm, or clove and cinnamon when you want to introduce the spirit of fall into your home.

2. Clean your home. Some essential oils can offer antibacterial properties and are a good choice for home cleaning products. For example, tea tree oil and lemon dropped into some diluted liquid castile soap can freshen and disinfect your home as an all purpose cleaner.

3. Banish soap scum. Essential oils can help you cut back on film and scum in your bathroom. Add tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil to a spray bottle of warm water to clean your bathroom areas covered in soap and other substances.

4. Deodorize your bathroom. Drop essential oil on the inside of your toilet paper roll to release a pleasant scent each time you roll the paper.

5. Create antibacterial room spray. Remove bacteria from surfaces and the air in the rooms of your home with an essential oil room spray. Combine essential oil and filtered water in a spray bottle, then spray it down.

6. Make your sheets smell like sleep. Spray your bedsheets with a lavender essential oil mix to encourage sleepiness. Mix several drops with filtered water in a spray bottle and spray it over your pillows and sheets to make your bed more relaxing and inviting for sleep.

7. Add scents to your laundry. You can make your laundry smell fresher using essential oils. Lavender, peppermint, or another pleasing scent can be added to your detergent or fabric softener as you wash clothes. Or, put drops onto a wool dryer ball to freshen as you dry. You can also create a deodorizing spray for stinky items such as athletic gear. Just add essetial oil to warm water and baking soda to spray them down in between or before washing.

8. Freshen your carpet. Combine baking soda and essential oils to penetrate dirt and grime and leave your rooms feeling and smelling more fresh and comfortable.

9. Banish pests. Some essential oils are useful for pest control. For example, peppermint essential oil is irritating to moles, gophers, mice, and other pests. Just combine several drops with water and castile soap, then spray the affected area to drive them away. Ants can be deterred by cinnamon essential oil or lemongrass. Some essential oils can ward off mosquitoes, too.

10. Keep your trash can fresh. Trash smells, there’s no way around it. You can empty it regularly, but even a clean trash can gets stinky sometimes. Spray down your trash bin with orange and lemon to keep it smelling as pleasant as possible.

11. Dust your furniture. Spray your furniture with essential oil to keep it clean and shiny. Mix olive oil, lemon essential oil, vinegar, and water into a spray bottle, then spray and wipe down furniture.

Essential oils can have many uses in your home, from cleaning to pest control and even improving your mood. These are just some of the ways you can use essential oils to make your home more comfortable, functional, and inviting. You can find a guide on the best essential oil brands and their uses at civilizedhealth.com.

Written by: Susan Austin