Raise your hand if you have a stinky garbage can?
Ya, me too!
From kitchen scraps to food gone bad to kitty food and snotty kleenex, your kitchen garbage can is bound to get a little stinky. Or a lot!
The problem with trying to reduce kitchen odours is that you’re left buying a toxic and chemical induced spray or wipes to clean up the mess and give your house and kitchen a blast of (synthetic) smelling fragrance.
Back in the day, before I had any idea the impact these products and ingredients had on my health and hormones, I used to love febreeze! I used it in my car and and would spray it onto my cat’s blankets and into the carpets.
Not to mention I used to be that annoying fragrance girl at the cosmetic counter at the mall handing out Armani fragrance samples and smelling synthetic perfume ALL.DAY.LONG!
No wonder I had intense migraines, regular headaches and PMS.
My environment back in the day was not one that supported my hormones.
You see, many of these toxic perfumes and cleaning products contain ingredients like ammonia, dyes, phosphates, SLS and triclosan, which seep into our pores and interact with our hormones.
Not to mention, your liver has a very hard time breaking down and detoxifying these agents out of your body and so you overburden the liver and slow down your detoxification pathways.
Now think about how many times you use these products, breathe them in and they come in contact with your skin? That’s everyday!! Over time this accumulation will lead to a host of health issues.
When we use these chemicals to clean our home, they linger in the air and we breathe them in without realizing it. According to David Suzuki, “Researchers in the U.S. identified 133 unique volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from a small sample of consumer products, including six cleaning products. Each product tested emitted between one and eight chemicals classified as toxic or hazardous under U.S. federal laws.”
That’s pretty scary! But the good news is that I have a simple and cost effective solution for ridding your kitchen garbage can of smells and best of all, it’s completely natural and won’t have any impact on your hormones!
So let’s get to it!
- 1/4 cup distilled water
- 1 cup baking soda
- 6 drops lemon essential oil
- 6 drops lime essential oil
- *Silicion moulds or ice cube tray
- Place all ingredients into a large bowl and combine together. You'll end up with a paste.
- Once all combined, scoop the mixture into an ice cube tray or a silicon ice cube tray (which is what I used).
- I made 3 large disks. You can divide the mixture into smaller parts to make more disks, but too small might not produce as much of a scent. I filled just 3 slots in my silicon tray.
- Once the mixture is tightly packed into the tray, leave uncovered and let it sit for 24 hours to harden. That's it! Once hardened you can place a disk at the bottom of your trashcan and you can store these indefinitely in a cool place in a container.
- *You can also use these disks in a smelly locker or other stinky areas/places around the house. Just be sure to keep out of sunlight or heat or they might start to break down.
- *Other essential oils that would work really well with this recipe are - pine, grapefruit, sage, tangerine or Onguard essential oil from Doterra,
