Being Green with Essential Oils

Today is the 22nd anniversary of Earth Day. Part of being a good steward of your health is taking care of the world around you! Our Holy Creator Yeshua the Messiah of All created this planet just for us. What a wonderful God we serve! So it our duty to take of the health of planet, so it in turn can help us with our health. All of creation is connected, while we are not same, there is a definite connection.

Here are Easy Ways to Be Good to the Earth with Young Living Essential Oils:

1) Keep Your Air Clean:

Still using Glade Plug Ins, aerosol room freshener sprays, or those crazy eye ball looking scented balls for a pleasant scent in your home or office? Ditch that mess! 

These products contain comments like: 

Phthalates: serious hormone disruptors, extremely dangerous for children, amounts built up over time can cause testosterone disturbance, and even genetalia mutations

Dichlorobenzene: precursor to DDT and linked to lung cancer

Instead....use a cold air diffuser! Young Living provides several high quality diffusers to choose from online. 

Pictured above is called the Home Diffuser. It covers smaller spaces like bedrooms and larger spaces like living rooms. Just adjust how much oil you use. Always start with just 4 drops. Increase from there if needed. 

Here's how to use it:

There's 3 parts to the home diffuser:

The Base

The Lid

The Plug

Remove the lid. There's a little plastic shelf line inside. Fill it with distilled water. Yes, use distilled. In this particular diffuser there's a stainless steel plate, and the minerals from the water can clog it. 

Add your desired oil and desired amount of drops directly into the water. 

Place on the lid.

Plug it in.

Push the button in the front to turn it on. 

The first time you push the button it will run continuously for about 3 hours.  The second time you push the button it switches to 90 second bursts, so it just depends on what you want.

This diffuser (or a higher quality substitution) comes for FREE when you purchase an Everyday Oils Premium Kit from Young Living. You get 8 essential oil sample packs, 2 Ningxia Red Goji Berry Health Drinks, and eleven 5ml sized bottles of therapeutic grade essential oils to use in your home! Order one here.

There are other diffusers available on the market besides the ones from Young Living, but many of them are cheaply made, and the plastic quality is lower. You won't be able to use citrus oils in some of them. For quality and control, choose Young Living.

2) Keep Your Water Clean: 

Get rid of the detergent and fabric softener. This stuff is seriously toxic. Then it goes into our waters, yuck! There are safer ways to have lovely smelling, fluffy towels. 

In commercial detergents and fabric softeners you'll find some of the following, and I'm not listing all of them:

Benzyl Acetate: linked to pancreatic cancer

Benzyl Alcohol: an upper respiratory tract irritant

Ethanol: on the EPA's list of hazardous waste

What works great at my house is I make my own laundry detergent, which is super easy, and way cheaper than brands you'd buy in the store. Here is the recipe I use, given to me from a friend a long time ago. 

Laundry Detergent Recipe

1 Cup Borax

1 Cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

1 Full Sized Dr. Bronners Baby/Unscented Bars of Soap

1 4-5 Gallon Bucket

Directions:

Put your bucket into the tub (if you have one). Grate your bar of soap, put it into the bucket. Pour hot boiling water over the top, and stir until mostly dissolved. Pour in other ingredients. Fill the rest of the bucket with water from the tub spicket and stir. Allow this to set for 1-2 days until it kind of gels on top, then it's ready for use. You only need 1/4-1/2 cup per full load, depending on how soiled.

As an option you can scent your laundry detergent itself with 5-10ml of essential oil. You can add the essential to the bucket and stir once it's set. Consider using lemon since it's great on stains!

For fabric softener you can rinse with vinegar. Vinegar is great for softening clothes. Add 1/2 cup for a large load to the rinse cycle. No, your clothes won't smell like vinegar!

For even fluffier clothes, use wool dryer balls. My girlfriend, BethAnne is a Norwex consultant, so I got mine from her. 

Use all three balls for each load. You'll get a ton of uses out of them. I add 2-3 drops of lemongrass essential oil to each ball. That gets me through about 2 loads of my favorite scent!

3) Keep Your Soil Clean:

Do you garden? Did you know that Round Up and other pesticides are toxins to the brain and to the gut? Instead for pesticides use essential oils! 

Try 10 drops each of rosemary, thyme, peppermint in a gallon of distilled water. Keep in a dark, cool closet. Mix the solution, and pour some in a smaller dark glass spray bottle for easy use.  Apply on flowers and vegetables.

4) Reduce Reuse Recycle:

Have a ton of essential oil bottles? Don't throw them into the trash! Make your own essential oil blends and use them for your family, or give them away as gifts. Print out a special label for them and pick a name.

*If you need essential oils, you can purchase them here. You can contact me if you have any questions here.

Enjoy the rest of your earth day! Helping you to be a good steward of your health!~Marie A. Ligorria, HHC