Friday, September 26, 2008

Essential Oils


I've been interested in essential oils for a long time and have used them mainly to refresh potpourri and in a spray bottle as a room freshener. I spray my pillow at night with a lavender mixture. Mmmm.

On discovering that "wipes" made to clean yoga mats were pretty expensive, I looked for a recipe to make my own.

There are lots of natural cleaning recipes online for all kinds of specific purposes, and I found several for cleaning yoga mats. They differed in whether they used soap, borax, vingegar, distilled water, vodka, etc.

I finally filled a 2 oz. spray bottle with distilled water and vodka and added drops of spearmint, eucalyptus, tea tree oil, and lavender essential oils until I was satisfied with the scent. Started with about 8 drops of each, but less of tea tree oil because while it has effective antiseptic and antifungal properties, it has a very strong, medicinal scent. I kept adding drops of spearmint and lavender until I loved the freshness.

Spray a little on the mat after practice, wipe it off, done. Mat is clean and smells good, and there is little effort involved.

I also made some wipes using a similar combination of oils out of extr
a thick paper towels and can use them on feet or hands. Cut the thick paper towels to the size you want, fold, put in a plastic freezer bag, and saturate by spraying into the bag.

Three of my favorites scents.


4 comments:

  1. wow, you are inspiring me with this.

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  2. jude - I do love the scent of these essential oils, and they carry such connotations!

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  3. These are a few of my favorite things, too. :) Good ideas.

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  4. Kim - Hard to resist lavender for relaxing, but that spearmint is such a pleasant fragrance!

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