DIY Green Cleaning Wood Polish

Bring the shine back to your favorite tables, chairs, floors, and other wood elements with this simple recipe for homemade wood polish with doTERRA essential oils.

Ingredients

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup vinegar

10 drops doTERRA essential oils

Recommended oils: Wild Orange, Arborvitae, or Lemon.

Instructions:

1. Add olive oil and vinegar to glass spray bottle.

2. Add 10 drops of essential oil.

3. Shake well before each use.

4. Apply to microfiber cloth and wipe wood surfaces clean. Repeat every two to three months or as often as needed. 

Tea Tree for Cleansing

Shop for Tea Tree here

dōTERRA Melaleuca Tea Tree essential oil is renowned for its cleansing and rejuvenating effect on the skin. For occasional skin irritations, apply 1–2 drops of Melaleuca essential oil onto affected area. For an added cleansing property, combine 1–2 drops with your facial cleanser, or apply to the skin after shaving. Not only is it best for cosmetic care, dōTERRA Melaleuca works great when cleaning hard surfaces. Add a few drops to a spray bottle with water and use on surfaces in your home to protect against environmental and seasonal threats.

Lemon Essential Oil

Do you love a clean, fresh, and citrus aroma?  dōTERRA Lemon essential oil in the perfect combination of all three. Lemon has many purposeful functions, especially when it comes to cleaning surfaces in your home. Add Lemon oil to a spray bottle of water to clean tables, countertops, and other surfaces. Lemon oil also makes a great furniture polish; simply add a few drops to olive oil to clean, protect, and shine wood finishes.

With spring right around the corner, check out 10 different ways to use Lemon in your cleaning routine through the link below:

https://www.doterra.com/US/en/blog/10-Ways-to-Spring-Clean-With-Lemon

Reduce Toxic Load

I grew up in a product-junkie household. It seemed my mom, a cosmetologist, had every professional salon product available at the time. My friends loved looking in our cupboards and testing different things on their hair and skin. 

Like many American households, we also had numerous cleaning products, candles, and air fresheners, tons of lawn chemicals in the garage, and gave no consideration to other sources of toxicity. 

It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I began considering reducing my exposure to toxicity. An author and radio host I listened to went through a horrific ordeal with toxic mold in his family's home. Once they were on the road to recovery, he and his wife began to use his show once a week to educate listeners on the steps they were taking to detox and live better. 

At the time, their advice looked like deprivation to me. No candles? No great smelling lotion? No fabric softener? How sad. 

It wasn't long after that I was introduced to essential oils. I quickly learned to employ these beautiful tools to transform our household cleaning and my beauty routine without any feeling of deprivation. We used them for everything from pest control to pesto. Not only were they safer, at a few pennies per drop, they were also less expensive and more effective! 

Our body is beautifully designed to eliminate toxicity, but unfortunately, our modern lifestyles provide a greater toxic load then they can handle. Have you transitioned your household yet? What are some areas in which you still use toxic chemicals? 

Melaleuca (Tea Tree) in Your Tool Kit

Melaleuca, also known as Tea Tree oil, is one of my favorite doTERRA essential oils because it is versatile and has range of applications. What I love most about Melaleuca is its benefits for the skin and hair. I often put a drop or two of Melaleuca into my moisturizer, or even directly on my face after washing to reap the benefits of this purifying, toning essential oil. I also like to place a few drops of Melaleuca in my shampoo, or give myself a scalp massage with Melaleuca and Fractionated Coconut Oil. 

To learn more about Melaleuca oil, how to use it, where it comes from, the chemistry of the oil, and more, check out this article on the doTERRA product blog: Tea Tree Oil Uses and Benefits: Essential Oil Spotlight.

Cedarwood

“Have you tried dōTERRA Cedarwood oil yet? Often referred to as Cedar oil, this essential oil is both unique and useful. With a warm, woody aroma, Cedarwood oil possesses cleansing and soothing properties that make it useful for promoting healthy-looking skin, soothing the mind and body, cleaning around the house, or promoting a calm environment in any room. Cedarwood is also extremely useful for repelling insects both inside and outside.

I love incorporating Cedarwood into my diffuser blends because of oils warm, inviting scent. I often mix Cedarwood oil with other warm oils like Cinnamon and Sandalwood. It also blends well with floral oils like Patchouli and Jasmine, or citrus oils like Bergamot and Lime. Here are two of my favorite Cedarwood essential oil diffuser blends:

Alpine Awakening diffuser blend
2 drops Bergamot oil
1 drop Cedarwood oil
2 drops Wintergreen oil

California Coast diffuser blend
2 drops Frankincense oil
2 drops Cedarwood oil
1 drop Rosemary oil

Safer, Greener, More-effective, Less Expensive Cleaning

This time of year, we should be increasingly vigilant about limiting environmental threats. Every classroom, home, gym, office, and studio should have some of this magic potion on hand! Just kidding; it's not magic. But there are some wonderful academic and clinical studies on the amazing oil blend in this cleaner concentrate. 

The uses for it are seemingly endless. One bottle of On Guard Cleaner Concentrate fills 18 16-ounce bottles with the perfect cleaning solution. So for the wholesale price of $14.50 per bottle of On Guard Cleaner Concentrate, you ca

3n fill 18 bottles at 80 cents apiece. So now that you’ve got 18 bottles of cleaning solution, what can you do with it you might ask. The better question is what can’t you do it with it. This cleaning concentrate is perfect for dishes, countertops, shelves, floors, and pretty much any other surface you can think of. I also love it because I can use it knowing it is safe for my family with it being a plant based cleaner. Want to learn more about this amazing product? Check out dōTERRA’s spotlight on the versatile cleaner: https://www.doterra.com/US/en/blog/spotlight-doterra-on-guard-cleaner-concentrate.