Category Archives: essential oil

DIY OVEN CLEANER

CONFESSION  
Cleaning my oven is not something I do often ever.  It’s not a place I think to clean.  
-Maybe I would if THIS were my oven though-

As I was searching for the best and most practical – meaning easy-  homemade house cleaners for me to use in my home, I came across this chemical-free OVEN cleaner on a website called YumUniverse.com  I really love the recipe that Heather has and I’m going to adopt it as my own oven cleaner!

 

TOOLS YOU NEED

paintbrush (like a pastry brush)
2 medium glass bowels
scrubber sponge
spoon

INGREDIENTS 

1/2 cup of liquid soap 
1 1/2 cup baking soda
2-4 drops of essential oil of your choice
1/4 cup white vinegar
water as needed to make thick paste

NOW CLEAN

1. Remove racks- clean them separately in the sink.
2. Add all ingredients into a bowl and mix well.  You will want a thick paste.
3. Paint the paste over the entire surface of the inside of the oven.
4. Let is sit for 6-8 hours (over night maybe???)
5. Fill bowl with clean water and use it with the sponge to wipe off the surface.  You may need to get clean water a few times.

 
Heather has a great step-by-step tutorial with pictures showing us how to do this.  Take a look HERE.  Thanks Heather for sharing!

Ok, so I want to know who is going to go clean their oven now?  I think I will paint on the cleaner on Sunday evening, let it do its thing all night and then wipe it down Monday morning.  A clean oven for the start of a new week might just inspire me to use it next week!  LOL  We shall see!

 

 

* Thank you SWANSONVITAMINS.COM for providing the wonderful, natural products for this blog series!!!  Go check out this great company for your supplies.  They have the best prices I know!!! Click HERE to get a $5 coupon to Swansons!!!  Go get you a FREE essential oil!

DIY Foam Hand Soap!

I USED
Liquid Soap (Dr. Bronner’s)
Empty foam soap bottle
Essential Oils
Water
Optional:
to make the soap moisturize, add 1/2 tsp of Vitamin E oil, Almond oil, or vegetable glycerin
Step 1       Fill soap about 1/4 of the bottle
Step 2       Put 10-20 drops essential oil – I used Tea Tree Oil and Lavender Oil
Step 3       Fill the rest of the way with distilled water
And DONE!
Oh, thank you for asking.  
The structure in the background of my picture is the home of our 
lovely little chicks!  
In a few months we will have lots of 
lovely little organic, free-range EGGS!
Thank you Girls!!!
   HAVE A HAPPY HEALTHY DAY!

DIY MICROWAVE CLEANER

I’m sure you are very busy today, 
so I will keep this short and sweet:
1. Fill a microwave safe bowl full of white vinegar and 15 drops of tea tree essential oil (or another oil you choose).  
2. Heat for about 2 minutes.  There will be steam.  
3. Wait about 3 minutes and then wipe down the walls with a clean cloth or sponge.  Be careful not to burn yourself with the hot vinegar bowl when taking it out.  

The end.  
Easy to do while you are washing out our dinner dishes tonight!

* Thank you SWANSONVITAMINS.COM for providing the wonderful, natural products for this blog series!!!  Go check out this great company for your supplies.  They have the best prices I know!!! Click HERE to get a $5 coupon to Swansons!!! Go get you a FREE essential oil!

 

HAVE A HAPPY HEALTHY DAY!
 

DIY: CLEAN SINK

FOR A CLEAN AND SPARKLY SINK, YOU WILL NEED
1-2 drops of lemon essential oil
damp cloth or sponge
1 tsp baking soda
Sprinkle baking soda on your sink.
Add lemon oil drops to damp cloth or sponge and scrub.
Rinse thoroughly.
THIS IS ANTIBACTERIAL!!!
theTIP
Keep a jar of baking soda under the sink so that everyone can have access to it and help!  
Clean your sink before you go to bed so you can wake up to a shinny, clean sink in the morning!

* Thank you SWANSONVITAMINS.COM for providing the wonderful, natural products for this blog series!!!  Go check out this great company for your supplies.  They have the best prices I know!!! Click HERE to get a $5 coupon to Swansons!!! Go get you a FREE essential oil!

DIY ALL PURPOSE KITCHEN CLEANER

Using chemical-free, non-toxic cleaners in the kitchen is super important to me.  When I spray a cleaner on my counters and appliances, it’s likely that some of the cleaner will end up on my  food and dishes, as well as in my lungs from breathing and on my skin (because there is NO way I’m grabbing gloves every time I wipe down the counters).  So for me, this is a no brainer.

Here is the recipe I’ve been using

1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp liquid castille soap
2 Tbsp vinegar
8-10 drops of essential oil
distilled water
spray bottle – glass is best
funnel
  1. Pour baking soda,  liquid soap, and vinegar in a spray bottle. For a large spray bottle, double the recipe.
  2. Shake it up and then let it sit for a few minutes. 
  3. Add essential oil and fill the rest of the way with water.  
 
theTIP
The last batch I made, I added orange oil.  It smelled good, but I had it in a clear spray bottle and it was not pretty.  The orange separates at the top and does not look good to leave out.  Every time I saw it, I would shake it up to make it look better LOL.  Actually this wasn’t a bad thing, because after shaking, I couldn’t help but clean something every time 🙂 
Isn’t that easy?  Now go make some up for your kitchen.
*  Thank you SWANSONVITAMINS.COM for providing the wonderful, natural products for this blog series!!!  Go check out this great company for your supplies.  They have the best prices I know!!!

HAVE A HAPPY HEALTHY DAY!

FROM CHEMICAL TO NATURAL HOUSE CLEANERS

Hey Friends! 
 These are my thoughts and my passion for making my own HOUSE-CLEANERS.  If you decide to join me after reading this, then check out the 

Do you ever get overwhelmed with this whole “HEALTHY LIFESTYLE” thing?  Well I have many times.  In my journey for better health, I have learned that it’s a process.  One step at a time!  Seriously, I started with switching from white to wheat.  I did the best I knew to do at the time.  Then we eliminated soda from our diet and replaced it with water.  Big step!  Fast forward 13 years and I am now growing my own scoby to make Kombucha – weird.  Anyway, America has gotten so far away from living healthy.  Don’t get me wrong:  I am so thankful for our human advances and I love living in this time in history!  I am often thankful that I was not born in Ancient Egypt!  Seriously!  In fact, that was my biggest takeaway as I taught the course to my daughter a few years ago.  I am SO THANKFUL for heat and air conditioning, for electricity, for my car and my iPhone.  It’s hard to imagine life without my computer, social media which makes my business possible, my UGGS (on my feet as we speak), and Starbucks – the place where these blogs and ideas come together 🙂  Oh, I need to mention my contacts, my Clarisonic, the variety in my closet, and HGTV!  Ok, I could go on and on and on…………………………………………………..!

What we are finding now is that some of the eases and conveniences are extremely harmful to our health.  For this blog series I will focus on
 
HOUSEHOLD CLEANERS and PERSONAL PRODUCTS.

Ok, so in 1989, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did a 5 year study and found that chemical levels in the home were 70% higher than outdoors.  They found that housewives have a 55% higher risk of cancer than women working outside the home!  And get this: Children are more susceptible to air born toxins.  Kids respiratory rates are 3x higher than adults, therefore they inhale and absorb 3x more the amount of contaminates!

I began paying attention to the chemicals in my house a few years ago when my son, Iver, was sick with asthma and allergies.  He was really sick for a year of his life:  3 ER visits, MANY sleepless nights involving the nebulizer, and a week long hospital stay.  After 9 months of praying and searching, we found a wonderful allergy doctor, DR. WOLF, who found the cause to be a sinus infection! We could not have found a better doctor. Iver had to battle that infection with antibiotics for a period, and now he is doing great!  I have been Iver’s “nurse” long enough now to see the effect his diet and his environment plays on his body.  It’s very real, very powerful, and very controllable!  During that sick year, as we call it, my eyes began to open to the fact that our home was not helping him at all!  I started taking measures to rid his environment of anything that could trigger his asthma… dairy, gluten, dust mites (yuck! by the way), and MY CLEANERS.  How ironic… I was doing my best to keep our home germ free and clean, when in reality, my efforts were making him worse.  Uggggg

THE WEEK IN THE HOSPITAL
 We thank God for friends who stick by our side, pray for us daily, and come to play DS when we are cooped up in a hospital room for a week. 
 Love you Cary and all who loved on us!
 
This was the day we knew we were good to go home.  His O2 levels were staying up with no help and this kid was out of bed and climbing the walls… back to normal.

I am still in the process of eliminating (the best I can) chemicals and toxins from my house.  I want my home to be a safe, healthy environment for my family. After switching some of our cleaners to chemical free brands,  I noticed 2 things:  1.  Our budget was hit.  2.  I missed the smell of “clean”.  I associated “clean” with the smell of chemicals.  Hhhmmmm, let’s think about that for a minute.  If I am smelling it, it is being absorbed into my body via my lungs!  Oh great :/  And if it touches my skin, it is being absorbed into my blood stream (and I’m not one to wear gloves).

So, the EPA analyzed 2,983 chemicals we use and found that:

  • 884 are toxic
  • 146 can cause tumors
  • 218 can cause reproductive complications
  • 778 cause acute toxicity
  • 314 can cause biological mutations
  • 376 can cause skin and eye irritations
[Source: The United States House of Representatives through NIOSH, 1989]

Not good.
 
Now if you haven’t noticed already, my sources are old!  BUT competition within companies to make products “faster acting”  “longer-lasting” and “more powerful”  are causing our health conditions to worsen.

One example: more and more people are developing asthma.  The number of people diagnosed with asthma has grown by 4.3 million from 2001-2009.  Source:  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  So sad.

During our “sick” year, I switched out my cleaners to non-toxic brands, but I am taking the NEXT STEP in my JOURNEY FOR HEALTH.  I will be making my own products.  This will save us lots of $$$ and teach me more about the tools God, Himself, has given us to use from the earth… not only are they not harmful, but they are HEALTHY!!!  

I invite you to join me!
Let’s take this journey together!!!
Click HERE for all of my DIY HEALTY HOME CLEANERS
Have a HEALTHY day!
BONUS FEATURE 
A few months after the hospital stay, Iver was back to normal.  I  realized that he had not been himself in a year.  I spent one rainy weekend looking at old video footage and boo-hoooing as I made this video.  I was, and still am so thankful to have this boy back!
[youtube id=”i1YlrBCIqIU”]

 

DIY HOUSECLEANERS SHOPPING LIST

For the month of June, I will be replacing all of my HouseHold Cleaners with NON-TOXIC, CHEMICAL-FREE solutions I am making myself! And I will document it here on the blog 🙂 You should join me in the next step of 
LIVING HEALTHY!!! 
 
So if you are taking this journey with me, here is a basic shopping list for you to put together before June.  
Essential Oils:
Need to be 100% Certified Organic.  What you choose is all about your preference.  Take a look at this Essential Oil Directory to get familiar with the different oil scents.  Read this to learn about the properties and benefits of the different oils.  These links might help you decide what oils you would like to use. 
 
Oh, did I mention you will save $$$$$ by making your own cleaners?  And it’s healthy?  
So are you taking the plunge?  
Let me know if you have questions and YOU BETTER share tips with me that you discover along the way!!!
THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!!!
 DIYhouseCleaners.jpg

DIY TICK REPELLENT


Spring is here and my kids are running around in the woods every chance they get.  They love exploring, hiking, and camping.  They have established clubs and hideouts within the trees and bushes behind our house.  
There are so many reasons I love them playing outside –
Adventure. Imagination. Being familiar and comfy in nature.
 But one thing makes me go “EW”…
 
TICKS!
YUCK! YUCK! YUCK!
Well today I’m happy because our homeschool science class learned about ticks and then made  
HOMEMADE TICK REPELLENT!!!
It’s chemical free, non-toxic, natural and so easy to make – I thought I’d share!
What We Used
1 cup water
squirt bottle
2 cups distilled white vinegar
15-20 drops of essential oil……..
 Lavender, Eucalyptus, Peppermint 
(use less peppermint if used on young kids)
If you want to learn more about icky ticks, read
by the TickEncounter Resource Center
 
Oh, don’t forget to make homemade 
“itch cream” to heal bug bits and stings.  Instructions HERE.
 
ENJOY THE SEASON!

STUFF WE MAKE…of EDEN

My desire is to make my home an environment that promotes health.  I’m constantly evaluating our current conditions, making adjustments to brands and products and experimenting with alternatives.  I really started changing things during the “sick year” we had with my son.  Read post about that here.  I want to thank allergies, asthma and infection for waking me up to the fact that I can have more control over the health of my home than I ever imagined!  So here are some of the changes we’ve made.  I hope you find some of this helpful!

      

DIY Toothpaste

DIY Plantain Tincture Itch Cream – for bug bites, stings & more
DIY Bug Spray

DIY Tick Repellent

DIY Refresh Your Skin
DIY Foam Hand Soap

DIY Laundry Soap
DIY Dryer Balls
DIY After Sun Lotion
DIY Toilet Cleaner
DIY Dusting Spray
DIY Sink Cleaner
DIY Oven Cleaner
DIY Microwave Cleaner
DIY Glass/Mirror Cleaner
DIY All Purpose Kitchen Cleaner
Why Replace Chemical, Toxic Cleaners with Natural

DIY SHOPPING LIST HERE!!!

DIY collage