Making your money go further with essential oils in this cost-of-living crisis focuses on identifying the essential oils necessary to your day-to-day well-being and those on the luxury list.
Explore how to focus on the properties of essential oils that you and your family need most for day-to-day living and your alternative medicine kits. Define alternative, cheaper essential oils you can use for the same purposes. Discover clever ways of saving money by buying in bulk or as a group.
Find out how you can eek out projects like bath bombs and body butter. Look at how you can use alternatives, like fragrances in your scented candles or Avocado oil in your Argan oil. We ultimately encourage you to look at how you can sustainably change your everyday habits.
Cost of Living Crisis
We are in an unprecedented time when the whole world is tightening its belts and carefully counting the cost of living.
When we economize, it is always the things we consider luxuries that are the first to be set aside and let go.
VINEVIDA is the first to shout from the rooftops how wonderful, luxurious and decadent our essential oils are. However, we also understand when essential oils are vital to our daily well-being.
We want to help you define the essentials from the luxury and show you ways to make your essential oils go further.
Essential Oil - What is a Luxury and What is Essential?
I use Ylang Ylang, Vetiver, and Lavender essential oils in my bathtub every evening.
Ylang Ylang essential oil helps maintain hormonal and blood pressure balance.
The Vetiver essential oil, since introducing it into the nighttime mix, has helped me to sleep much better. I have also noticed an improvement in my endometriosis symptoms.
Lavender for relaxation, loosening stiff and aching muscles, and soothing that itch that winter often brings to your lower legs.
Occasionally, when feeling decadent, I suggest adding some Sandalwood, Rose Geranium, and Jasmine essential oils.
It is easy to see here that the Ylang Ylang, Vetiver, and Lavender essential oils are all for my wellness and managing symptoms. They improve my quality of sleep and, in turn, my mobility and ability to function the following day.
For me, these are essentials.
However, my Sandalwood, Rose Geranium, and Jasmine essential oils are most definitely luxuries, ones to be conserved judiciously, too, so I will only need to replace them slowly. When it does come time to replace them, I will struggle to justify the purchase because these are not essential to my well-being.
Alternative Medical Kit
Keeping essential oils for your first aid kits like Tea Tree, Eucalyptus, and Peppermint essential oils. These essential oils have many properties and cover many bases, from muscle aches and insect bites to coughs and colds.
I always grab a handful of essential oils when I go camping, and mine might include Galbanum and Citronella essential oils too. Galbanum may seem odd, but there is nothing better to put on a blackthorn prickle or splinter. You can always find Blackthorn on our camping grounds, hence its inclusion. You can't beat a bit of citronella to fend off the beasties.
I probably do not need those; I like to have them on hand.
Take a look at the essential oils that you keep and use.
- Why do you use them?
- Are they to manage or relieve the symptoms or causes of conditions?
- Or are they just because you like their scent in your diffuser?
- Even though essential oils in a diffuser will affect you, is it an essential one?
Work out which essential oils are your keepers.
Pinpointing Properties of Essential Oils
Let's take a look at the essential oils that I use daily.
- Ylang Ylang Essential Oil for balancing blood pressure and hormones.
- Vetiver Essential Oil for improving sleep and managing endometriosis symptoms.
- Lavender Essential Oil for muscle loosening, relaxation, and soothing skin.
Let's look at the properties of these three essential oils, supported by Julia Lawless in The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils (1992):
Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
Its properties are much wider-ranging than the balancing act I use it for. It can be used as an aphrodisiac or an antidepressant, calming nerves and uplifting your mood into euphoria. It is a sedative of the nervous system, yet a stimulant of the circulatory system. It can be used as a tonic and system regulator. Yet, interestingly, it is also anti-infectious - helping us resist catching and fighting infections and antiseptic.
Vetiver Essential Oil
It contains antiseptic constituents and is used in Ayurvedic medicine to expel intestinal worms. It had antispasmodic properties, which could be why I find it so useful for endometriosis. It contains circulatory stimulant chemicals that will bring the blood up to the skin's surface and help produce red corpuscles in the blood. It is a sedative for the nervous system and has a reputation for helping clear the blood and bodily systems of impurities.
Lavender Essential Oil
As we know, it has an extensive range of properties. It can relieve pain associated with inflammation, like rheumatism and arthritis. Like Vetiver essential oil, it contains antispasmodic constituents, and like Ylang Ylang, it can help support healthy blood pressure. It has diuretic properties and is reputed to be able to expel intestinal worms. It can be used as a deodorant and a sedative and will act to relax the nervous system. These are just a few of Lavender essential oil's many properties.
Using these three examples, it takes little to appreciate that you can cover a wide range of your family's needs with these three essential oils alone.
It would be helpful to write down your family's needs and the properties those essential oils need, like an antiseptic, antiviral, or decongestant, and work back from there.
You can find plenty of supporting information on the VINEVIDA essential oil web pages. I entered 'anti-inflammatory' into the VINEVIDA search bar, and it brought back essential oils and associated blog pages. Use that facility to help you plan the best essential oils for your specific and individual needs.
Being Canny With Your Money
Paying for Delivery
When I often consider the cost of postage or delivery, it is always worth adding more to my order to make the delivery cost worthwhile. In the past, it may have benefited me to do so, but at the moment, it would be a false economy.
Buy what you NEED; if you only need two essential oil bottles, buy those. There is no point filling your basket with things you do not need to make the delivery cost less of a crunch.
Clubbing Together
If you have friends and family that use essential oils, consider putting in a group order; this will also bring down the cost of delivery.
Also, consider buying items in bulk. If five of you buy Shea Butter - buy a 2lb pack and split it between you. Buying in bulk as a community can make things much cheaper in the long run.
Take Bulgarian Lavender essential oil, for example. At the time of writing, 10ml costs $5.99, and 120ml costs $13.99. If you were to split a 120ml bottle three ways, you would each have 40ml, costing you just $4.66 per person. You get so much more for less than the cost of 10ml. It is a no-brainer.
Bulking Things Out
You can afford to bulk things out where possible when making things for yourself and your family. Make your basic ingredients go further and work harder for you.
Kids love making bath bombs, and it is a project where the main ingredients can be pretty expensive. You can add quite a lot of cornstarch to the final mix to make the recipe bulk out. It is much cheaper than the other ingredients, and the only effect it will have on the final product is a little less fizz but much more silky softness in the bathwater.
The kids will never notice the difference. Your bank balance, however, certainly will.
Consider adding aqueous cream when buying those gorgeous cosmetic butter for projects. Aqueous cream is delightfully cheap and goes a long way. Some people also prefer how it sits on the skin and absorbs quickly. Please reduce the amount and cost of the cosmetic butter.
Slippery Slope?
When creating projects that need a lot of carrier oils, like bath oils or bath scrubs, consider using a cheaper carrier oil. Could you use Grapeseed instead of Argan oil?
If you are tight on budget, as I have been in the past, I have swapped things out for Sunflower and Olive oils that I had in the kitchen.
When you mix carrier oils with cosmetic butter or base creams, you find them less noticeable than when they are the main ingredient, like bath oil. Pick your project carefully.
You might think you are going down a slippery slope, but why not try a few cheaper alternatives, make a tiny amount and see how it stands up ? The rest of the family often won't notice the difference, and you can get away with it while things are tighter than usual.
Take a look at all of your projects and ask yourself, what can I use instead, or in addition, to make this go further?
Alternatives
Swap Essential Oils for Fragrances, Where Appropriate
Are there alternatives that you can use in your essential oils project?
I advocate for using pure and natural essential oils, but for projects like making scented candles and cold-process soap, essential oils don't always cope well with the heat and the creation process. Often, they can lose the potency and strength of fragrance.
Using fragrance oils in candles can be a much more cost-effective way of getting a solid fragrance that lasts the candle's life.
We know that 120ml of Bulgarian Lavender Oil is $13.99. Lavender fragrance is $9.99 for the same volume—a cheaper alternative.
If you need the fragrance and not the properties of the essential oils, it makes sense to go with an aroma that will stand up to the heat rather than a more expensive essential oil that may not.
If you need essential oils' properties, always go with those, but again, look at alternatives. You can find another, a cheaper essential oil with the same properties you need.
Always be willing to be flexible and change the plan.
Changing Habits
Covid 19 impacted the world and forced some of us to look at our lives and change our habits. My hairdresser, Andrew, has been a bit of a victim of people's changing habits.
During the lockdown, people could not get to him, so he sent out hair care packages with dyes and instructions, and people started to use home dyes bought from the internet too. Of course, they soon realized they could maintain their hair and that it didn't look too bad without a cut for 12 weeks.
This is because people are leaving it longer and longer between booking appointments. Those who booked every 6 weeks now book, say, every 12. Those who would pay to have hair dye are arriving having already dyed their hair at home and having just a cut and blow dry instead of the works.
It makes us realize what habits we can change if we are economizing.
How can you change your habits using essential oils? It will be different for each one of us.
Here are a few ideas that I am trying at the moment:
- Putting fewer drops of essential oil into my moisturizer and skin care products.
- Instead of adding 10 drops of essential oil to my bath, I'm adding 5-6 drops.
- I'm adding more carrier oil to body butter to make it go further. I might pop some cornstarch into bulk it out, soak up the extra carrier oil and give it a velvety finish.
- I'm using cheaper but still good-quality carrier oils and swapping more expensive carrier oils like Argan carrier oil for Avocado carrier oil.
- I will take a more expensive carrier oil like Rosehip carrier oil and mix it with a good quality Jojoba carrier oil to extend the usage. That way, you still get the beautiful properties of those carrier oils.
- Using fewer essential oils in candles and cold process soap and trying out fragrances instead.
- Use less, make do, and don't do things as often.
The last one may seem obvious, but to many, it is not.
Are you washing your hair daily? Do you need to? I moved from washing my hair every day to every third day. Admittedly the dry shampoo is usually out by day three, but my hair and scalp are in much better condition.
I also am using far less product because of using it seven times a week; I am using it twice. This cuts down not only on the product but also on the packaging I use.
We all need to make small changes and live a more sustainable life anyway. Now is the perfect time to swap up some of your regular habits.
The Last Word
Hopefully, this article has given you a few pointers on how to define essential oils from luxury ones and which are necessary to your daily well-being.
Focusing on the properties of the essential oils to inform your purchases, rather than plumping for ones you usually choose out of habit.
Realizing that you can build your alternative medical kit with just a small selection of essential oils by focusing on the properties of the essential oils you and your family need most often.
Economizing by clubbing with friends and family to make the cost of postage cheaper and buying in bulk to split between you all for a more cost-effective way of buying your essential oils and related supplies. Remember how much more affordable that Bulgarian Lavender essential oil was?
Experiment with bulking up some of your projects with cheaper, alternative ingredients you might not have tried before. Eek things out and make your ingredients go further and work harder for you. For example: adding more cornstarch to bath bombs and body butter.
Mixing the more expensive carrier oils with cheaper ones will make it go further.
But more than anything, consider changing your habits forever, and resolve to use less moving forward.
Shopping smart for what you need helps make your money go further with essential oils. Brighter times are ahead.
