Natural Cleaning Tips with Essential Oils

Why Clean with Essential Oils

Are you concerned that your cleansers aren’t all that clean? Labels of mainstream home products such as hand soaps, spray cleaners, and toothpastes reveal a number of harmful and toxic ingredients. It comes at no surprise that people are turning towards all-natural cleaners such as essential oils for their home cleaning care.
Why are essential oils good for cleaning?
Aside from their attractive and lovely scents, plant essences are well known for their antimicrobial components. Pure essential oils are incredibly potent, so potent in fact that they can destroy microbes (bacteria, viruses, and fungus) with their unique compounds.

Oils with various properties and scents can be combined to make a home cleanser personalized for your exact needs.

What constitutes an essential oil?
Not every essential oil is created equal. If you’re thinking about adding essential oils in your homecare routine it’s important to ensure that you are using pure essences, so you get the maximum benefits from the most potent and healthiest plants.

When purchasing your essential oils, keep these tips in mind:

Purchase organic
Unless otherwise stated, scented or perfume oils are not essential oils.
Look for 100% pure labels. The only ingredient should be the desired essential oil.
Avoid preservatives, additives, and synthetic ingredients.

Best Essential Oils for Green Cleaning

If you’ve ever made your own cleaning products, its likely that you love that you can get that sparkling clean without dangerous chemicals. You also know that homemade cleaners can smell well…pretty “blah”.

Not only do essential oils smell divine, they actually help in elevating your mood and efforts while cleaning. Here are some of the top essential oils you need in your homecare-cleaning regime:

Lavender – This stress-relieving oil naturally relaxes the nervous system, perfect after a long day at work. It also helps that this oil is a top antiseptic, bactericidal, antiviral, and fungicidal.
Lemon – Are you feeling down? This essential oil is not only an antimicrobial, bactericide, and antiseptic, it has been shown to improve people’s moods when cleaning.
Peppermint – This revitalizing oil has been shown to enhance work performance and increase alertness, in addition to its antiseptic properties.
Sweet Orange – This refreshing, citrus-based oil has earned its place among household cleaners for its antibacterial and antifungal properties, which in turn help to make a great degreaser.
Tea Tree – Looking for something powerful? This oil is strong on its own, but essential oil combinations often benefit from its bactericidal, insecticidal, antiseptic, and antifungal properties.

6 Ways to Clean With Essential Oils

Essential oils offer an all-natural, effective, and safe alternative to harsh chemicals in the home. If you’re committed to better living, read these 6 tips on incorporating essential oils into your cleaning routine.

Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens – Some people are hesitant to use essential oils because they don’t think they are powerful enough to tackle tough germs. Wrong! In fact essences such as tea tree, eucalyptus, and oregano have been proven to work against tough viruses like Staphylococcus and Influenza.
Floors – Essences such as lemon are tough competitors in dissolving marks and dirt on both carpets and hardwood floors.
Furniture – Essential oils are great for gentle and regular cleaning on antiques, sofas, and even mattresses. Safe on all surfaces, feel free to spray pure oils anywhere that needs refreshing.
Outdoors – From pest control to gardening, essential oils can help combat everything from pesky ants to outdoor bubblegum residue.
Kids Toys – You can never be too cautious when it comes to your child’s toys. Essential oils help combat bacteria, viruses and odor in a safe and non-toxic way.
On-the-go – Don’t forget about cleaning on-the-go! Essential oils can be used to create portable wipes and disinfectants, great for use on hands, shopping carts, and other surfaces.

Essential Oil Recipes

Essential oils are a growing popularity for its home uses in aromatherapy, healthy cooking, oral care, home purification, family wellness, and of course natural cleaning.

The powerful “clean” scents that you get from conventional cleaners may have your home feeling disinfected, but often comes from a host of toxic chemicals. Pure essential oils are strong and effective against touch bacteria and viruses. And how else could you get a cleaner that smells of fresh mountain rain and strawberries?

Our favorite scent combinations:

Spearmint, lemon, bergamot
Vanilla, lemon, rosemary
Lime, lemon, basil
Lavender, lime
Eucalyptus, rosemary, lavender
Tea tree, peppermint, eucalyptus
Mandarin, sandalwood, geranium
Lavender, vanilla,
Peppermint, vanilla
Orange, clove, cinnamon

How much to add to a recipe?

For a more gentle scent or for those not concentrated on the properties of the oil, add 5 drops of your essential oil to 3 cups of your cleaning solution.

To obtain the cleaning properties of your oil, use between 10 and 20 drops per 3 cups of solution.

In some cases, you may want to use a stronger concentration, for uses such as a poo pourri or linen spray. In these cases 25 to 40 drops is recommended.

You can also feel free to add a few dashes of your essential oil to your sink water, mop water, or even your laundry detergent.

Essential Oils Cleaning Tips

With the consumer rise in green living has come the integration of essential oils in home care cleaning. People around the world have decided that their family deserves better, and we agree!

Essential oils are made by cold pressing or steaming raw plant material. The pure, distilled liquid essence of a plant is great for adding an extra punch to your homemade household cleaners. Additionally, these homemade cleaners can help fight the blandness of homemade cleaners, leaving behind strong cleaning properties and rich scents.
Popular essential oils and their properties:

Lemon – antiviral and antibacterial
Tea Tree – fights germs bacteria and viruses
Rosemary – antibacterial and antiseptic
Wild Orange – great against grease
Lavender – naturally antibacterial
Eucalyptus – natural germicide
Peppermint – antibacterial
Cinnamon – antibacterial and antiseptic
Pine – common cleaner ingredient
Thyme – one of the most powerful against germs

How to clean with essential oils:

Don’t add your essential oils until you’ve poured your cleaning liquid into the spray bottle.
Naturally, oils and water do not mix well. Before each use, give your product a healthy shake.
When possible, store your essential cleaning products in a dark glass bottle. Essential oils have been known to decompose plastics while light can lead to decomposed therapeutic qualities over time.

Essential oils are safe on every surface.