When I began using essential oils and actually began trying out some oils for myself and the girls, I did some really silly things just out of ignorance. Looking back, when I think of how much I wasted, careless mistakes I made, and safety issues I failed to address, it leaves me feeling responsible to share them with others.
I thought it could be helpful to write a post on mistakes I made as a rookie oil user to help prevent others from going through a bit of the learning curve that I trekked through.
Mistake 1: Wash your hands everytime you handle an oil. This prevents you from accidentally rubbing your eyes and getting EO in them (ouch! It really burns!) When you apply oils topically you can’t help but get them on your fingers and it’s easy to forget when you’re just going through your morning or evening routine…but don’t forget! I have done this more times than I care to tell you. If and when you do get an oil in your eyes, use coconut oil vs. water. Coconut oil works like a charm and gives immediate cooling relief.
Mistake #2: Too many drops of oil in the diffuser/trusting Pinterest for my EO education. Be careful when looking for recipes on Pinterest. They often times call for way more drops of oil in your diffuser than needed (3-6 drops is plenty!) or more drops than necessary in a cream or roller. More oils isn’t always better. I want to get my recipes from one of the other Joydroppers that I trust in our groups or from a reliable source like The Gentle Babies book.
Mistake #3: Not trying one oil at a time. I made the mistake of making a face roller that worked for a bunch of other girls, but made me break out. There were 4 oils in the blend and I had no way of knowing which one was making me break out. If I had tried one at a time, I could have saved precious oil and money. Costly mistake. Introducing one oil to your body at time is always good advice.
Mistake #4: Not using caution with citrus oils. I can think of 3 incidents where this happened for me.
One, I added lemon to my face roller to brighten my skin. I didn’t understand why the lemon wasn’t helping brighten my skin, but making it worse instead. It was because I was using citrus by day! I was using the roller by day, and lemon is photosensitive oil that can CAUSE sunspots and shouldn’t be used when exposed to the sun. Oops.
I would either apply citrus EOs at night, add carrot EO to my roller in the spring and summer months, or layer with sunscreen.
Two, I used thieves to make a hand sanitizer in a cheap plastic bottle and didn’t realize thieves contains lemon which will break down a cheap plastic. Within a couple months of use, my bottle started looking warped and the lid looked as if it was melting. Yikes!
Three, at a make and take workshop, my oily partner and I decided to add a drop of Orange EO to our orange juice that we were drinking from disposable plastic cups. The oil immediately started breaking down the cup before our eyes! Never will we put citrus in plastic again!
As I’ve learned more about citrus and the amazing things these oils can do for the body, that kind of makes sense. Citrus oils detoxify and help our body break down and digest our food and those same constituents were going to work on that plastic.
So absolutely be sure do use glass with citrus or blends containing citrus. I even make sure the roller balls in my roller bottles are metal or glass.
These aren’t easy mistakes to admit, but they all could have been avoided if I had been informed.
Essentially Better Living 