Happy and Healthy: Your Guide To Essential Oils For Essential Living

Essential oils boast an abundance of health benefits that you can take advantage of in your Glenwood home! From soothing muscles to helping you get a good night’s rest, essential oils can enhance your life and give you energy. We can help you find the best essential oils for your needs, as well as how to use them on your own.

Glass Bottle Essential Oils

A Few Essential Rules To Get You Started

To an essential oils novice, it may seem like you could never have too much of a good thing, right? Wrong. For starters, essential oils come in small, tidy packages simply because a lot goes a long way, and due to their strong plant extracts, it’s best to not go over the recommended number of drops, as per the bottle. Also, due to their highly potent content, essential oils are best when diffused (i.e. putting them directly on skin without diluting first or in drinking water/food products is not recommended.) Once you have these basics down, however, there’ss so many wonderful smelling concoctions you’ll be able to come up with, your home will smell delightful, whether on the Upper East Side or Downtown.

What You’ll Need

Carrier Oils

If you’re looking to use essential oils for any sort of personal care routine (i.e. creating a delightful bath oil, salt scrub, or salve), you’ll need a carrier oil. Carrier oils are neutral, plant-based oils that can act as a base, and will also dilute the oils enough to make them safe to use for bathroom items. Common carrier oils include sweet almond, jojoba, olive, sunflower seed, avocado, and grapeseed.

The Encore Living Room
The Encore, Glenwood NYC

Diffuser

For using essential oils as an air freshener in your home, the simplest way to go about this is to get a diffuser (or three!) Diffusers come in many different styles and price points, so whether your home at The Encore is modern or your Emerald Green pad is boho chic, there’ss definitely a diffuser out there to fit your style. Some diffusers require access to an outlet (and steam out the oils), while others are simply decorative (which can be more potent for shorter periods of time), so take stock of your apartment and what model fits your needs best.

Pro tip: diffusers are the scented candles of 2018, hence you can never have too many of them. Consider having one in your foyer (nothing like a warm scent when welcoming guests into your home), bathroom (to keep up that sparkling fresh scent), and bedroom (because lavender is guaranteed to get you snoozing after a long NYC day.)

Glass Bottles

Essential oils make fabulous aids to all natural cleaning products. Not only are the benefits huge to your family (keeping those toxic chemicals away from children and pets is wildly important), but they truly do smell amazing, and make cleaning a joyous task. Depending on how you intend to use the oils, a great thing to start out with are glass spray bottles for creating an all natural cleaning spray, as well as smaller spray bottles (think: travel size ones) that can be kept in different rooms of your home and used as air fresheners and linen spray.

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Essential Oils

Last but certainly not least: essential oils! Depending on how quickly you want to dive into the essential oils lifestyle, you can purchase a kit that includes all the basic oils (plus kits with fancy ones, too), or you can take stock of what you intend to use your oils for, and create a list from there. Personally, after playing around with essential oils for a few years now, I’ve found that purchasing just the oils that you intend to use ends up being much more cost effective, plus allows you to focus on scents you truly love, rather than having a bunch of never-been-used bottles sitting around your bathroom.

Recipes For Using Essential Oils In Your Home

Now that you’re stocked up on all the essential oil essentials, it’s time to have a little fun! Here’s a few recipes to get you started with essential oils in your own home.

The Daily Connoisseur gives a great recipe for an all natural cleaning spray, which can be used in wiping down kitchen and bathroom counters, and gives off a wonderfully calming scent.

Essential Oils Hand Holding

Lavender Vinegar Multipurpose Cleaner

-1 cup water

-1 cup distilled white vinegar

-40 drops Lavender oil

Pour all ingredients into a spray bottle, and store in a cool, dark place.

The Prairie Homestead shares her favorite summertime DIY room spray, which fills an 8 ounce spray bottle and can be stored in every room of your home. These are also great for throwing in your bag and spritzing up your workspace, or making extras for hostess gifts.

Summer Citrus Air Freshener Spray

-3/4 cup water

-2 tablespoons vodka, rubbing alcohol, or real vanilla extract

-5 drops wild orange essential oil

-5 drops lemon essential oil

-5 drops lime essential oil

-5 drops grapefruit essential oil

Combine all ingredients into an 8 ounce spray bottle, shake well, and spray as needed.

And if you’re looking for a fabulous way to decompress after a long day and relax those sore muscles, The Wellness Mama shares her favorite bath salt recipe using essential oils.

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Lavender Mint Bath Salts

-2 cups epsom salts

-1/2 cup baking soda

-1/4 cup dead sea salt (optional)

-30 drops of lavender essential oil

-10 drops of peppermint essential oil

-2 Tablespoons of carrier oil of choice (coconut, almond, jojoba, argan, etc.)

Store in an air-tight jar and use 1/4 cup per bath.

Oils and supplies can be purchased locally at your nearest health store or Whole Foods, as well as ordered online. Happy essential oiling!

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