creating more hygge in your kitchen with essential oils wellness stations
There are days I take having natural options for my home, for granted. Then I walk by the aisle in Publix with all the cleaners (or in the case of March 2020, an absence of cleaners), and the days of me being desperate for an alternative to bleach and windex come crashing back into my memory.
If you’re like me, you spend approximately 97% of your day in the kitchen… and likely a little more with this social distancing and the littles being home. And although that’s probably a slight exaggeration, I know you get it.
There are kids needing 42 snacks a day, 3 meals to make, not to mention the difference between what this kid will eat, what that kid will eat, what’s in my macros vs making sure I have enough carbs in the dinner to keep my husband out of the peanut butter jar or devouring any food I happened to meal prep for the next day, and then cleaning up again after.
Does this all go through your head, too, when I just mention the kitchen?! I for one, certainly struggle with battling stray thoughts inside my brain all day long.
So there’s this method I’ve grown accustomed to in my home + in my kitchen that makes my time spent in the kitchen a lot more comfortable and reduces my decision making, and it’s creating wellness stations. They’re actually all around my home, but this blog post focuses on just the kitchen.
And I love relating it to the Danish word hygge (hyoo-guh), which is a word for “a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment.” Yes, please, more of this.
I actually have three oils stations setup in my kitchen:
the first is for cooking + water
the second is my diffuser station
the third is my wellness station
Cooking and Water Station
When you have avocados that need to be turned into guacamole RIGHT NOW or else they’ll end up in the trash - tell me - do you ever happen to have lime and cilantro at the same time? Or when you remember to buy the basil you needed for your recipe, but it ended up being rotten by the time you’ve gotten to it? Or what about when you’re out of dried oregano, what do you do? Or when your dinner screams for ginger, but you don’t have any?
I keep oils like this available in my kitchen! With 250 drops in each of the 15 ml bottles, these will last you a long time.
oregano - cilantro - thyme - pink pepper - ginger - celery seed - black pepper - basil
Here are some recipes to check out that use essential oil:
peppermint brownies - quinoa salad - raw rainbow salad with tomato basil dressing - lemon basil vinaigrette - cranberry lime spritzer
One of the easiest ways to receive internal benefits of essential oils is by flavoring your water, so these are also right next to where we fill up our water bottles!
Just make sure it’s an oil safe for internal use (you can tell by the label on the bottle), and use a glass or stainless steel drinking container, or else you’ll ruin all your tervis tumblers like I did at one point.
Citrus oils are a beautiful option to add to your water, as they contain high levels of limonene, so many of the citrus oils are sitting right next to where we fill up our water. You can read more about the benefits of limonene here.
Some examples include: Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit, Wild Orange, Tangerine, Peppermint, Slim & Sassy + Green Mandarin. I also love to add these to my sparkling water!
Diffuser Station
Granted, a lot of the oils in the station by the sink are interchangeable with the diffuser station, but I do like to keep a few staples right next to the diffuser, which is on the opposite side of my kitchen than the sink + cooking oils (in my kitchen just for what makes sense space-wise).
Some staples rotating in the diffuser station are peppermint, spearmint, lavender, On Guard, and Elevation.
As I’m pouring my first cup of coffee, I set the diffuser in the kitchen - typically to something like peppermint and wild orange, or Breathe and Green Mandarin, or Spearmint + Citrus Bliss.
As we transition into the kids coming home from school, or in between activities if they’re home, I’ll diffuse something like ADAPTIV for emotional support back into the warm hug of home, or On Guard if I know there’s a lot of bugs going around and their immune system could use a boost. Add a couple drops of Wild Orange to sweeten up the fall-like scent of the On Guard, if you’d like!
Wellness Station
This overlaps again. In the wellness station, you’ll find a roller bottle of breathe, an On Guard touch roller, and my supplements for the week all sorted out in a pill box. The actual bottles of my supplements are in my “pantry” cabinet above the counter. I know that as the kids eat breakfast, it’s a habit trigger for me to pull out their vitamins (A2Z chewables, PB Assist Jr, kids omegas). Since I mainly fast until lunch, I know that when I eat lunch, it’s time to get my first dose of supps. Dinnertime means my second dose.
Currently in my pill box: Lifelong Vitality, DDR Prime, Turmeric duo caps, and Terrazyme. Supplements are an amazing way to get your body vital nutrients, allowing all of the other healthy things you do to have a greater impact on your body.
If this sounds like a lot… just a gentle reminder it took me a while to figure out what works for us.
Start with placing your lemon oil that came in your first kit next to your sink, and putting Lifelong Vitality supplements on your next doTERRA Loyalty Rewards order.
I love helping people figure out these baby steps towards better health, and painting a picture of what it could look like for them as they deep dive into this natural lifestyle doTERRA offers us.
To get these into your own home, or request a sample of an oil that intrigues you, head over to annabordner.com/shop and we’ll get you all setup! (For the month of March, I have a special promo code for you for an extra free oil when you get started, so make sure to reach out before ordering!)
Also check out annabordner.com/vht for the dates of my Visionary Health Tour stops (currently online!) where you can get connected with me to learn more of the basics of essential oils.