Clean hands are the guardians of health. And while washing your hands with warm soapy water is always best, sometimes life doesn’t allow for that luxury. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where right after you touch something, you have this inexplainable urge to wash your hands? Sometimes you can just feel when something is icky. Having found myself with this reaction more in the past few months, it solidified my practice of carrying homemade hand sanitizer everywhere I go.
While homemade hand sanitizer gel is wonderful, I found that the mixture would sometimes clump up in the bottle because of the aloe vera gel. I started tinkering with other high alcohol solutions to try to resolve this dilemma. I wasn’t going to quit until I had a recipe that was both effective and soothing to my hard-working hands! What proved to be the all-star ingredient was vegetable glycerin.
Vegetable glycerine is an emollient, which means that it helps to soften and hydrate the skin. Since alcohol tends to be drying, it was important to incorporate a skin moisturizing component to balance the recipe out. While aloe gel also works in this way, vegetable glycerine is more suitable for a spray and I have found that it lasts longer than aloe gel.
Makes about 5 ounces.
Ingredients
Directions
Pro Tip: You can replace the essential oils above with 30 drops of our pre-made shield essential oil blend.
*It is important for this recipe to use cinnamon leaf oil instead of cinnamon bark. Cinnamon bark is much stronger and can be irritating when applied topically. If making this recipe for younger folks, you might want to omit the cinnamon altogether as it is very strong. If attempting to make a recipe for toddlers, we highly recommend avoiding essential oils all together.
You may also enjoy:
Four Thieves® is a registered trademark of Young Living Essential Oils, LC. Mountain Rose Herbs is not affiliated with Young Living Essential Oils, LC in any way.
Topics: Aromatherapy, Natural Body Care, Recipes, Green Living
Jessicka Nebesni is the Senior Marketing Strategist and Herbal Liaison for Mountain Rose Herbs. Her passion is to share the most educational, empowering, and useful resources with the Mountain Rose Herbs community and on her IG account @herbalasfolk. Having practiced Macrobiotic food preparations in California, beekeeping in Oregon, and making herbal crafts for local farmers markets in New Jersey, she has a wide variety of experiences and knowledge to share. Her passions include preserving food, gardening, practicing herbal wellness, making DIY skin and body care recipes, and living a lifestyle of minimal impact on the Earth.
Clean hands are the guardians of health. And while washing your hands with warm soapy water is always best, sometimes life doesn’t allow for that luxury. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where right after you touch something, you have this inexplainable urge to wash your hands? Sometimes you can just feel when something is icky. Having found myself with this reaction more in the past few months, it solidified my practice of carrying homemade hand sanitizer everywhere I go.
While homemade hand sanitizer gel is wonderful, I found that the mixture would sometimes clump up in the bottle because of the aloe vera gel. I started tinkering with other high alcohol solutions to try to resolve this dilemma. I wasn’t going to quit until I had a recipe that was both effective and soothing to my hard-working hands! What proved to be the all-star ingredient was vegetable glycerin.
Vegetable glycerine is an emollient, which means that it helps to soften and hydrate the skin. Since alcohol tends to be drying, it was important to incorporate a skin moisturizing component to balance the recipe out. While aloe gel also works in this way, vegetable glycerine is more suitable for a spray and I have found that it lasts longer than aloe gel.
Makes about 5 ounces.
Ingredients
Directions
Pro Tip: You can replace the essential oils above with 30 drops of our pre-made shield essential oil blend.
*It is important for this recipe to use cinnamon leaf oil instead of cinnamon bark. Cinnamon bark is much stronger and can be irritating when applied topically. If making this recipe for younger folks, you might want to omit the cinnamon altogether as it is very strong. If attempting to make a recipe for toddlers, we highly recommend avoiding essential oils all together.
You may also enjoy:
Four Thieves® is a registered trademark of Young Living Essential Oils, LC. Mountain Rose Herbs is not affiliated with Young Living Essential Oils, LC in any way.
Topics: Aromatherapy, Natural Body Care, Recipes, Green Living
Jessicka Nebesni is the Senior Marketing Strategist and Herbal Liaison for Mountain Rose Herbs. Her passion is to share the most educational, empowering, and useful resources with the Mountain Rose Herbs community and on her IG account @herbalasfolk. Having practiced Macrobiotic food preparations in California, beekeeping in Oregon, and making herbal crafts for local farmers markets in New Jersey, she has a wide variety of experiences and knowledge to share. Her passions include preserving food, gardening, practicing herbal wellness, making DIY skin and body care recipes, and living a lifestyle of minimal impact on the Earth.
