Apothecary University | Deborah Dolen, Dean of A/U

Aromatherapy - Chapter XII by Deborah Dolen

AROMATHERAPY - Chapter XII

Cleaning with Essential Oils by Deborah Dolen

Excerpt How to Make Perfume and Aromatherapy Basics Copyright © Deborah Dolen 2011 This e-book is available in full version on Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook. By Deborah Dolen Mabel White

Cleaning with Essential Oils Cleaning with essential oils is a non-toxic way to clean the home while lifting your spirits at the same time! As we see below, the power and energy of an essential oil can be delivered through a variety of systems, alcohol (for disinfecting) and the most common cleaning medium-good old soap and water. Most products in the store shelves are not "soap" and you will not see the word "soap" on them. Some people even try to brand SLS as "natural soap" and it is not. As you may all be aware, I use my own organic liquid soap to clean almost everything. The brand name is Mabel's Miracle Liquid Castile Soap and is a plant vegetable based soap made with 100% organic olive oil. It's multipurpose and can be used as a gentle yet effective, fruit and vegetable wash, floor & counter cleaner, laundry soap, window wash, pet shampoo and even straight on the body as the world’s most gentle cleaner. Made in America, it's petrol-free, detergent-free, and completely biodegradable, with literally hundreds of uses. Products I design are never tested on animals, only on husbands.

To Use: The pump measures exactly one ounce for you. Half a pump would be half an ounce. An ounce in a gallon of water removes pesticides from fruits and vegetables. ½ an ounce for a sink full of dishes. 1/4 ounce in warm water cleans all your under garments. 1 ounce in a pail of water will clean your house and automobile. For extra heavy jobs cut it in half or use it straight. Pour some on a fabric stain and watch it disappear. Castile Soap will disappear naturally after it has done its job. Cleaning Tips (excerpts from Maid Holistic by Mabel White) Disinfecting We use alcohol 90% or higher to disinfect communicable areas, but not until it is cleaned with soapy Castile water.

Alcohol may disinfect (by making germs evaporate with it--sucking the life out of them), but it does not 'clean' an area. Alcohol is not really effective until it's all evaporated, so you need to wait a good five minutes to use an area after wiping it down with alcohol. No one in our lab has caught a cold or the flu in the two years since we started wiping down all common areas with basic alcohol, and prior to this practice it was musical germs and sick leave.

Any kind of 90 proof or higher of alcohol is okay; we use the stuff from the pharmacy, just regular rubbing alcohol if we do not have 190 Everclear on hand. Everclear is basically ethanol. You can add essential oils to alcohol giving it a great scent. Just add a couple of drops of Lavender, Tea Tree (which is a germ busting powerhouse in its own right) per 8 ounces of alcohol. You can even add Ylang Ylang, from the floral family; Lemon, Lime or Siberian Fir Needle essential oils may also be appealing candidates to scent your alcohol. In the autumn you could add a touch of orange and clove essential oils. You do not need to wash your hands as much as you do wipe down any areas of constant contact with other people. This means handles, keyboards, and phones. Most people do not "get" that 40% of viruses are tranmitted in our actual water supply - so if you are OCD about anything, exchange habits for wiping down communicable areas and using special wipes on your hands instead of tap water.

Laundry – Making Your Own Laundry Soap You can use Mabel's Liquid Castile as laundry soap, or any natural liquid soap in your 'green routine'. To clean laundry naturally use ¼ cup of liquid castile and one cup of a booster (baking soda--borax mix described below). You can add essential oils to the soap about to be used in the wash too! Lavender is a nice choice, Lemon a clean scent, or my favorite, 'Fresh Cut Grass', not an essential oil, per se--but an effective aromatherapy grounding scent. We use one pipette full, (1/10 of a ounce) although prudent people suggest only a few drops of essential oil. Either way is fine if it is mixed in the soap first, since the soap disperses the oil. Borax is natural and the Indians used to wash their clothes near Borax deposits. It also whitens clothes and is dynamite when combined with the sun to whiten yellowed shirts, clothes or towels. Storing our clothes in a closet has a lot to do with yellowing, so air drying clothes in the sun is always best practices.

To use: Mix ¼ cup (2 ounces) of Castile liquid soap per wash, (2 pumps if using our pump that measures for you) with one cup of your 'green' dry booster blend into the laundry water. You can make a dry 'booster' with 1 part baking soda to 2 parts mule team borax. Borax is a natural salt. We mix ours and keep it in a reusable one gallon white pail. Many people have tried this and say it cleans just as well as the commercial brands. We agree. They also swear using the soap directly on a stain is as good as the commerical brands. Again, we agree.

Blood removal - Keep hydrogen peroxide in your natural laundry bag of tricks. It takes fresh blood right out.

Mop Water- Adding Liquid Castile and Essential Oils to Mop Water We use one ounce of Liquid Castile per gallon of mop water, dropping essential oils into our mop water to give it a refreshing, natural and clean scent. Our favorites? Lemon for kitchen and dining areas, Lavender for bedroom areas, lime or even peppermint essential oils for the bathrooms. Siberian Firr Needle is quite pretty and smells like a high class pine. Add up to an ounce of Tea Tree Essential oil if you need serious germ busting effects-such as areas that are condusive to mold.

Mold Spray - You can also make a spray in a spray bottle to specifically target mold instead of using cholorine products. To have that fresh and clean commerical scent, use lemon essential oil and tea tree essential oil for its mold busting powers--shaken with water in a sprayer. Spray all potential mold areas until mixture is gone. This is because certain essential oils do not store well and may melt the plastic pump parts. You may want to "flush out" your pump when done with soapy water made from liquid castile soap.

Garden Soap - Spiders and Bug Spray To make your own natural garden bug controller, add a tablespoon of Mabel’s Liquid Castile Soap to a 16 ounce spray bottle of water. Adding a few tablespoons of cooking oil to the 'potion' and shaking well will really do them in. Bugs do not really like to hang around soap, and oil seems to suffocate tiny ones. Spray the base of your plants because that is where they tend to 'hop on' and leaves, that they are trying to eat in the first place. If you need extra fighting power, they HATE Geranium Essential Oil, (this is why planting geraniums often protects gardens). So a few drops of geranium and maybe Black Pepper Oil, in your potion, will give you WMD in the garden. Other essential oils they do not like include Lemongrass, Orange, Spearmint, & Peppermint.

To make a spider spray for inside the home, you may just want to omit the oil part of the recipe and spray where you think they are gaining entry.

Pets - My liquid castile soap is the way to lather Rover and also achieve a clean and shiny coat. Most commercial products in the market are overpriced and geared with heavy scent to make the humans happy. Dogs have a higher pH than humans. So commerical pet soaps don't have the proper PH, make the dog miserable as well as rob natural oils from the pets coat as well as cause skin conditions. Also, animals often develop sensitivities to the detergent chemicals commonly used in synthetic pet shampoos. Then we are told they are 'hot spots' as if they are some unexplained phenomena. When your pet suddenly has a skin condition, then they have more high priced products for that too. As far as scent, dogs have 25 more times scent receptors than humans do. It does not take much to overwhelm them. For this reason, essential oils can be used, but sparingly.

To use, mix 4 ounces (1/2) a cup of our Castile Liquid Soap too a gallon bucket of water. Mix well and lather away. Essential Oils and Dogs Never apply essential oils directly to your dogs skin. To repel buds, a dosage of 1 drop per 8 ounces of soapy water of the following essential oils can be used on your pooch: Lemongrass, Lavender, and/or Tea Tree. Other Natural & Aromatherapy

Household Tips - You can spray bath towels with a slight mist of Peppermint for that 'luxurious hotel' feeling. This idea has been borrowed from a Ritz Carlton. Eucalyptus is another viable essential oil to use in the disinfecting department. Orange essential oil will dissolve and get gum off most anything. Citric acid (vitamin C) will usually clean the soap grunge out of a dishwasher. Run a cycle with nothing but ½ cup of citric acid. In fact, we make citric acid 'toilet' cleaning bombs, allowing them to do their job over night. Lemon and Tea Tree is always a good choice when cleaning around plumbing. Citric and baking soda bombs can be used to clean a dishwasher as well as for toilets.

Citric Solution - I do not like the smell of vingar so I opt for a "Citric" solution. I use 10% citric acid to 90% distilled water - heating them up together in the microwave. When it is dissolved (stopped snowing) I cool it down and bottle it. I use this solution as window cleaner, in the laundry and so on.

SOURCES
http://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Dolen/e/B00457BI2S
http://deborahdolen.blogspot.com/2011/07/aromatherapy-chapter-xii-by-deborah.html