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Choosing a #scent for your #natural #cleaning #recipes

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One of my favorite things about using natural cleaner recipes for your home is choosing my own personal scent. When you purchase cleaners at the store you are stuck with whatever scent the company is using at the time. Sometimes we get so used to the smell of commercial cleaners that we start equating that smell to the scent of clean. But, the scent has nothing to do with the cleaners power and that means that when using natural cleaning recipes, you can make your home smell like anything you want!

Sunflower Essential Oil

Sunflower Essential Oil

In general essential oils are more expensive than fragrance oils. You can find essential oils in most health food stores as well as most natural living stores. Often times they will also carry some of the more popular fragrance oils. You can find essential oils and fragrance oils online for a much cheaper price. One of my favorite places to purchase essential oils is Amazon. There are many third party vendors that sell essential oils on Amazon for a lower price. Since you are still purchasing through Amazon you are able to use free amazon gift cards to pay for your order. This can really save a lot of money since many essential oils are priced by the ounce.

Use essential or fragrance oils to scent your natural cleaner recipes. These are usually in addition to the natural cleaner recipe ingredients. Many essential oils have additional properties that help the cleaner kill certain bacteria or viruses (depending on the oil used) as well as their scent. If you use a fragrance oil it will only provide a fragrance.

Orange and Lemon Essential oil are two of my favorites for scenting my cleaners. Both smell fresh and clean. Orange is one of the cheapest essential oils you can buy and it has some great characteristics (such as dissolving “sticky” substances) that makes it useful in more than just scenting the natural cleaners.

One of my other favorites is cedar essential oil. It is a great smell for wood polish and floor cleaners. When mixed with lemon essential oil you get a fresh woody scent.

Fragrance oils are cheaper and you can find almost anything you want in a fragrance oil. The only thing to keep in mind with fragrance oils is that they are usually heavier than essential oils and so you do not want to use them in a natural glass cleaner recipe. The oil will cause streaks in the glass. They do make excellent additions to other natural cleaners, especially floor and bathroom cleaners. I also drop fragrance oil into my air vents to give a full house scent.

You can get almost any scent in a fragrance oil. Some of them are more natural scents (flowers, trees, herbs, etc) and others are more man-made (I use a “pumpkin pie” fragrance each year around Thanksgiving). The sky is the limit!

I’m Heidi and I write about very frugal recipes and natural cleaning tips among other frugal and couponing subjects at my blog Frugal Tips by Little People Wealth. I hope to see you there soon!

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Heidi @ Little People Wealth

Sunday 13th of November 2011

Thanks :) I wouldn't use an essential oil alone on a damp area, but mixing an oil with baking soda can help and it gives a fresh scent.

Julius

Friday 4th of November 2011

nice tips about the essential oils, i hadn't thought of using them for household cleaning!

do you have any recommendations of oils that could help with damp?

thanks :)