Aromatherapy Air Freshener: Recreate Grandma’s Homespun Miracles

Aromatherapy air fresheners cleanse, sanitize, and purify all your indoor air with no risk of chemical propellants, dangerous hot wax, or airborne metal particulates dissolved from spray cans.  More importantly, for the price of one can of commercial air freshener, you easily can produce a year’s supply of all-natural, completely healthy, and absolutely delicious aromatherapy air freshener.  And, before you hunt down a mortar and pestle or start squeezing essential oils from all your favorite flowers and fruits, stop to consider how many delicious aromatics you already store in your pantry and your refrigerator’s crisper.  Until you feel ready to invest in a high-powered diffuser, nebulizer, or plug-in essential oil burner, borrow a few clever tricks from your grandmother’s collection of time-honored repertoire of homespun miracles. 

Fruits are Fabulous Air Fresheners

Although you have lost all desire to cut it up for tea or lemonade, that “historical” lemon slowly oxidizing in the bottom of your crisper still has life as an aromatherapy air freshener.  Poke its withered little pulp with a fork or steak knife, so that vital juices and essential oils will escape; then drop it in a small saucepan with a little water and simmer it all day, letting it fill your kitchen and eventually your  whole house with the fresh scent of lemon.  You can do the same with all the citrus fruits, knowing they not only smell wonderfully tropical but also that their naturally cleansing properties are scouring the airborne bacteria and viruses from your indoor air—especially good for keeping your home fresh and healthy during the winter months when you dare not open the windows.

Your Signature Fragrance as an Aromatherapy Air Freshener

Of course, your sense of smell profoundly affects your moods and motivation; fragrances influence your self-esteem and self-confidence.  Once again, wax nostalgia about your beloved grandmother’s peccadilloes: surely, you remember how she always scented her hankie.  Grandma understood exactly how even a little dose of her favorite fragrance could give her a little boost as she powered through her day; she was, after all, the prototypic primordial superwoman.  Use her technique for creating an aromatherapy air freshener designed and developed to make it all about you: Saturate a couple of your favorite linen handkerchiefs with your favorite essential oil recipe—best to soak, not to spray, because a little of your precious essence goes a long way.  Mix a few drops of your scent in a cup of water, saturate hankie, and hang in your bedroom, office, and car for just the olfactory jolt you need to keep you at your best all day long.

Keep it Healthy. Make it Work.

When colds and flu strike, capitalize on the medicinal properties in aromatherapy air fresheners to help your patients heal and to protect other family members from catching whatever “bug” is going around.  The most popular ingredients in your favorite cough drops and chest rubs also come in their essential oil forms—far more potent and considerably more economical.  In the “sick room,” mix menthol, eucalyptus, and lemon into the water you put into the humidifier, so that every breath brings relief to your patient and protection for you as you care for your feverish and sniffly little camper.  Mix those same ingredients with water for use as an anti-inflammatory, bacteria-fighting, pain-relieving gargle.  And use the pulp and peels from the lemons you squeezed to clean-up and disinfect cutting boards and kitchen surfaces where bacteria and viruses thrive.