All-natural products and methods to clean and sanitize your home: 12 uses for tea tree essential oil
Maintaining good hygiene standards in the home is fundamental for your well-being and health, and you may use expensive, commercial chemical detergents to achieve this end. But in addition to being pricey, these chemicals can be harmful to you if you breath them in and/or they get on your skin.
For more sustainable and less deleterious detergents, many homeowners have turned to using all-natural and homemade mixtures/solutions. But despite these homemade detergent "concoctions" being good at removing grime, they usually don't have the same sanitizing capability of synthetic, commercial detergents.
And this is where essential oils can come in handy. Essential oils are natural compounds with numerous important properties: tea tree oil in particular (extracted from the Australian plant Melaleuca alternifolia), is perfect for sanitizing the home thanks to its broad-spectrum antiseptic and antimicrobial properties.
So, how exactly can we use tea tree oil to sanitize the home? Let's find out below:
1. Laundry sanitizer
If you want to sanitize your laundry, add a teaspoon of tea tree oil to your regular liquid or powder laundry detergent; if you make your own detergent, you can add 40 drops of this essential oil directly to your DIY mixture.
2. Multi-purpose cleaner
To clean and disinfect all the washable surfaces in your home, you can make a practical, multi-surface cleaner in a spray bottle. To a mixture of white vinegar and warm water, add 30 drops of tea tree essential oil (or 20 drops of tea tree oil and 10 drops of either lemon, lavender or orange essential oil). Now, you will have an effective, pleasantly-scented DIY spray detergent.
3. Detergent for stubborn stains
When dealing with particularly stubborn stains and caked-on dirt, the obvious choice is to use baking soda. Baking soda mixed with a little water will make a slightly abrasive paste that has excellent whitening and stain-removing powers (use 3 tablespoons of baking soda with 3 tablespoons of water). To ensure proper sanitization, you can also add 10 drops of tea tree essential oil to this paste.
4. Floor cleaner
To clean the floors - especially if you have pets and/or children at home - you can prepare an effective floor cleaner with tea tree oil. There are different recipes you can make, depending on the type of floor you need to clean:
- For a basic floor cleaner, put 25 drops of tea tree essential oil into a bucket of warm water, possibly adding a spoonful of baking soda or denatured alcohol to facilitate the mixing the two main ingredients. This DIY cleaner is suitable for the most delicate floors types (such as natural stone, marble or granite);
- For more robust floors (such as those in terracotta, ceramic or vinyl), you can prepare a cleaner consisting of half a glass of white vinegar and 30 drops of tea tree essential oil in a 5 liter bucket of water;
- Finally, for wooden and parquet floors, add 20 drops of tea tree essential oil to 2 tablespoons of baking soda and 1 pinch of Marseille soap flakes - then dissolve all these ingredients in 3 liters of water.
5. Combatting mold
Tea tree essential oil also has a strong anti-mold properties that you can use on any surface in your home: simply put 15 drops of essential oil onto a cloth soaked in hot water and dab the moldy areas.
Alternatively, you can prepare a detergent to use in a spray bottle by mixing a spoonful of tea tree oil with 250 grams of table salt, 4 spoons of hydrogen peroxide and 500 ml of white vinegar. Spray this on the moldy surfaces and scrub with a sponge or brush.
6. Air freshener and purifier
Finally, tea tree essential oil is also useful for deodorizing and purifying the air. There are several ways you can do this:
- Add 15 drops of tea tree essential oil to a diffuser;
- Mix a few drops of tea tree essential oil with sweet almond oil to create an all-natural air freshener to be used with diffuser sticks in a jar or bottle;
- Another effective air freshener can be made with 10 drops of tea tree oil added to half a glass of vinegar and half a glass of vodka or food alcohol.
Did you know about any of these uses for tea tree essential oil?
