4 things u must know about using essential oils

1. In aromatherapy you should not mix more than 3 essential oils together. The general guideline is 2-5 oils, depending on the individual oils. Certain essential oils shouldn't be mixed together bcs of their medicinal properties.

2. When you experiment with essential oils, make sure you are in a well ventilated room and don't overdo it. A decade ago, when I started experimenting with essential oils, I didn't know how much of the essential oils enter your bloodstream simply through the vapor. I used very potent essential oils like eucaleuptus and rosemary and kept smelling the cosmetics until I accidently passed out... Plus, there is a thing such as essential oil poisoning when you overdose. This is important to be aware of, but nothing to be scared of, bcs if you use normal amounts as recommended in recipes, then that can't possibly happen to you.

3. Essential oils still behave like oils. Therefore, you must bind them with sth. Either a carrier oil or salt. Why is this important? For example, if you directly drop essential oils in your bathwater, it will swim on the surface and then directly touch your skin, which can actually burn you. That's why you always mix it with salt first. And, It is not enough to just drop it on salt and then add it to the water! That's how I burned myself before, and it is really painful with the hot bathwater.

Instead, you want to add the salt to a container with a lid, e.g. a pickling glass. Then you add your ingredients and shake it really really well.

4. Citrus essential oils ( and oregano, eucalyptus, and star anise essential oils) dissolve plastic. Have you seen those videos, where moms use a drop of essential oil to burn open tight elastic hairbands from their daughters' hair? Yepp.

But, why is this important?

Bcs most organic detergants use citrus and pine essential oils, as they are less expensive. So if you wash your clothes with those, overtime all of your elastic bands will completely stretch out.... been there, done that 🤧. In fact one brand was so bad, just one wash cycle was enough to completely destroy the elastic band of the cuffs from a dress. And my 95% cotton shirts that have 5% elastane in them also stretched out and had tiny white strings all over... I had to recycle them.

So instead, you want to buy those organic detergants that are for sensitive skin, bcs they do not contain any essential oils. Or, if you do want to have a slightly fresh scent, then choose one with only lavender. In my experience lavender essential oil is no problem in that regard.

I always use a mixture of 50% lavender detergent and 50% detergant without essential oils. To be more precise, I add 1 portion of the scent-free detergant in the compartment for the first washing cycle and I add 1 portion of the lavender detergant in the compartment for the 2nd washing cycle. That way the clothes have a very faint lavender smell and stay intact.