Essential oils aren’t just good for the health of your body. They’re also good for the health of your home. Humans have treasured these vital plant essences for thousands of years in the home, from strewing crushed herbs on a dirt floor to today’s distillation processes.
Over time, we came to realize that certain essential oils do more than cover up foul smells. They also help with cleaning. One of the most well-known examples is Pine-Sol, although today’s formula only contains pine oil for the scent and not for its cleaning power.
Does Mask It Spray Double as a Cleaner?
We made Mask It Sprays because we noticed our reusable cloth masks started smelling funky after wearing them for a while. The smell of our breath over time built up on the cloth fibers and left an unpleasant odor. Yuck!
Washing them after every use was a possibility, but with busy lives and kids and all the rest, taking the five minutes to hand-wash our masks was too much trouble. We would have gone around with a wet mask all day long.
So, we use our essential oils knowledge to come up with a spray that would not only cover up the smell but also kill the bacteria causing the stink. The result was our Mask It Spray line, our most popular product.
What’s in them that cleans so well? The secret is certain essential oils you’ll often find in other cleaning products. For good reason!
Why Lavender Cleans So Well
Did you know that the word lavender comes from the Latin word ‘lavare’, meaning to wash? It’s no wonder then that it’s found in many cleaning products. It holds a special place in our Relax Mask Spray, made with a blend of lavender and bergamot oils (more on that last one in a bit!)
If you’ve ever smelled a bottle of lavender essential oil, you know how well it calms you down. But lavender also has disinfectant properties, which make this spray perfect for cleaning masks and cleaning your home. It’s a two-in-one special, and it’s all-natural to boot. No wonder humans have used this herb since at least the time of the Romans for cleaning!
Citrus Oils Cut The Crud
All three of our adult Mask It Spray flavors contain different citrus oils. These include grapefruit, sweet orange, and bergamot oils. Like lavender, these have antibacterial properties and are great at cutting through yucky messes.
You’ve seen grapefruits and sweet oranges before, but what is bergamot? Bergamot is a type of bitter orange. It looks like a wrinkly bumpy lime, and you can’t eat it because it’s far too sour and bitter.
The oils in this fruit are used in flavoring food and beverages. Have you ever had Earl Grey tea before? Bergamot oil is one of the main flavorings that give that tea its distinct flavor. Look for brands that use natural bergamot oil though, because there are synthetics out there!
The Wonders Of Witch Hazel
Another oil found in these sprays is witch hazel oil. Witch hazel is most well known for relieving itchy skin. You can find it in a lot of natural mosquito-bite sprays. But it also has antibacterial properties, which is why you can find it in sanitizing sprays like ours.
The key bit in witch hazel is its high level of tannins. The bitterness in your black tea is because of tannins, but witch hazel has far more. Tannins are a protective that keep bugs from eating a plant, and that includes tiny bacterial bugs!
Cleaning Your Home With Mask It Sprays
If it stinks or if it needs a good cleaning, any of our Mask It Sprays will do the job. Just spritz a little onto the spot that needs cleaning and let it sit for a minute or two so the oils can do their thing. Then, wipe clean!
However, if you want to stretch your bottle out or you have a larger area to clean, you can mix our spray with an 1:1 solution of vinegar and water. Simply unscrew the top of our Mask It Spray and pour the contents into a larger spray bottle, then dilute.
Vinegar is an excellent cleaner on its own, and it is a natural product, but it’s too potent to use alone. That’s why cutting it with water helps. Plus, it doesn’t damage the cleaning power of the oils in our products.
With a larger bottle, you can use it for household cleaning or for freshening up stinky areas like your garbage can. But that’s not the only place it’s good for. If you have a gym bag, try spraying the inside of it and see how it cuts away the stinky smell. No more gym funk!
The same goes for your car. Our sprays probably won’t cut through sticky scents like tobacco and vape juice, but for general cleaning and kid spills it works great! Much better than hanging another artificial pine tree air freshener off your mirror.
Musty clothing is another thing you can use these sprays to spruce up. That smell comes from the water trapped in clothing. Even if something feels dry when you pack it away, that bit of water is enough for microbes to move in and make a stink.
Washing the garment again is the usual trick, with maybe a bit of vinegar to help kill the microbes, but what if you need to clean something in a hurry? Try using Mask It Spray instead. It’ll cover up the musty scent and get to work killing the microbes.
What about pet messes? Pet messes are a bit more complicated to clean and you’ll probably have to use a separate cleaner to break up the stain. But once it’s out, you can kill that bit of remaining odor with just a few spritzes.
In short, any place where you’d use a cleaner is a good place to use our Mask It Sprays. Our all-natural cleaning blends smell great and kill the germs that cause odor. If it’s good enough for your mask, it’s good enough to use in the rest of your home!
Namaste At Home Spray – Coming Soon!
Finally, we have a special product announcement! Near the end of May, we’re releasing our Namaste At Home spray. This spray is the latest in our line of cleaning and sanitizing sprays!
As the name suggests, this spray was designed for all the yoga practitioners reading the blog. It’s meant for cleaning plastic yoga mats after practice sessions, but it can be used for house cleaning just like the other Mask It Sprays.
We hope that the scent of this India-inspired cleansing spray will inspire you to deepen your practice of yoga, and give you another tool in the battle against bad home odors. Look for it on our site toward the last week of May!