MAKE YOUR HOUSE A HAVEN WITH ESSENTIAL OILS
Whether you’re returning to your childhood home for the weekend or unlocking your apartment at the end of a long day, there’s nothing like going home. It’s not just about opening the front door with its familiar creak or spotting beloved decorations dotting every room. It’s about the invisible things that really make a house a home.
The Smells.
You don’t have to be passive about the smells that define your home and just how homey it feels. You can create your dream home, scentwise! That’s where essential oils come into play. In the book Essential Well Being: A Modern Guide to Using Essential Oils in Beauty, Body, and Home Rituals, author Sara Panton dives into all the ways we can use essential oils for selfcare—including to cultivate a sense of home.
“Using scent to cue the brain to realize that a space means something is an incredibly powerful concept,” writes Panton. “For instance, lavender in a bedroom creates a sense of peace and lightness, while grapefruit in a kitchen feels fresh, bold, and crisp.”
This season, fill your home with scents to calm and uplift you and your guests. Here, Panton shares her favorite essential oils to diffuse in two important rooms: the kitchen (the busy heart of the home when you’re entertaining) and the bathroom (the oasis you can escape to for a quiet shower or bath).
Bathroom Diffuser Blends.
Diffuser blends that I love for the bathroom depending on the time of day I am using them. What makes a diffuser more adaptable than a candle for the bathroom is that you can set the mood or create an oasis even before you enter the space. Each of these diffuser blends was designed for a specific bathroom ritual, and each one plays with the senses at different times of day and in different routines. Add one of these bathroom blends to an ultrasonic diffuser.
choosing a diffuser
There are so many types of essential oil diffusers on the market. So, which one do you choose? Author Sara Panton prefers ultrasonic diffusers, which work with a mixture of water and the essential oils of your choice. These diffusers use vibrations, not heat, to break the essential oils into microparticles and disperse them through the air in a cool mist. The gold standard? An ultrasonic diffuser made with BPA-free plastic and an auto-off safety switch.
