Homemade Shower Soothers for Colds and Congestion

Susie — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 12:38:17 +0000

There’s nothing worse than trying to trug along through your day when you have a miserable cold. Even just some sinus congestion can feel so uncomfortable and just distract you all day. Sure, it’s winter, but it doesn’t mean you have to just sit in discomfort and blow through 10 kleenex boxes a day. These easy to make shower soothers will help you breathe more easily when you feel sick.

You know how good it feels just to take a shower and breathe in some steam when you have a cold? These shower soothers make that feel ten times better than that, if you can believe me! They are so refreshing and really do ease that icky congestion.

They’re so simple to make too!

Ingredients:

Baking soda: The main body of the disks, helps keep them fresh and retain smell
Citric acid: Creates the fizzing effect
Corn starch: Makes the shower disks hold their shape
Epsom salt: Helps you feel more hydrated and helps relieve sore muscles
Eucalyptus essential oil: Opens your airways and helps with congestion
Water: Binds everything together

You can see in the picture above an example of the clumping you should see when you add water to the mixture. If your mixture looks this clumpy- you’ve gone slightly too far! So use this as a precaution- stop slightly before this point.

All right, I think you’re ready to find out how to make these suckers.

Homemade Shower Soothers for Colds and Congestion

Ingredients

1/2 cup of baking soda
1/4 cup epsom salt
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup citric acid
1-3 tablespoons water
10-60 drops eucalyptus essential oil

Instructions

Mix the baking soda, epsom salt, corn starch, and citric acid in a mixing bowl until well combined
Start adding the water gradually. There will be some amount of fizzing and clumping. You want to keep the fizzing minimal. So stir while you add, and tend towards less water. Less is definitely more here.
Pack the mixture into silicone molds or an ice tray. You can really pack them down. They are going to expand so you can make them small.
Using a glass dropper, drop 2-10 drops of eucalyptus oil into each mold section, depending on how strong you want them to be
Let dry overnight in a dry place. They will expand somewhat.
To use: place on the floor of the shower, not directly under the stream. Place where some of the water will splash onto the disks. If you put them directly under the stream they will fizz away quite quickly. The longer you want them to last, the farther you should put them from the direct stream of water.

You can see in the picture above how much my shower soothers puffed up. I definitely added too much water, which made them expand more. So make sure to use your water sparingly. If you use too much all the fizziness will be used up before you even get a chance to use these in the shower!

And let me just say, you want the chance to use these in the shower. Using one of these made me feel like I was in a spa. The eucalyptus is so relaxing and refreshing.

I’m not saying I’m looking forward to getting a cold, but I do love having an excuse to use these. Eucalyptus is definitely one of my favorite essential oils. It is really great stuff. I always use it to help me breathe when I have a cold.

So there you have it. I bet you didn’t realize how easy these would be to make! So you really have no excuses… go out and make some yourself!

Supplies Used in this Post

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How to Make Homemade Toilet Fizz Bombs (Only Three Ingredients)

Susie — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 11:00:12 +0000

When I first saw the recipe for these toilet bombs on Maria’s Self about a year ago, I thought it looked super awesome. I was still in the beginning stages of learning about green cleaning and it seemed like a more “advanced” recipe to me. Well, trust me, it’s not. I just didn’t know what citric acid was yet. This recipe is ridiculously simple and that’s what makes it so great!

There’s something so satisfying about dropping one of these into water and watching it fizz away. And they smell so fresh. Obviously these can’t replace cleaning your toilet, but they do deodorize smells and kill bacteria! So they are great for in between cleans.

It cost me $3.91 to make one batch of these toilet bombs. For me, that was about 30 toilet fizz bombs. And they’re green and all natural. And so much fun to use.

The best part is, there are only three ingredients:

Citric Acid: removes build up and scale, reduces effects of hard water, antibacterial, adds awesome fizziness (you can get it here)
Baking Soda: deodorizes smells, great all purpose cleaner
Essential Oils: bind baking soda and citric acid together, antibacterial (depending on which oils you use), natural scent

So don’t be scared if you haven’t heard of citric acid before. It’s a great thing to have around for green cleaning.

Homemade Toilet Fizz Bombs

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup baking soda
1/2 cup citric acid
90 drops of essential oils (I used 30 drops of lemon, 30 peppermint, 20 orange, and 10 lavender)

Directions:

Put the essential oil mix you want to use together in a small spray bottle and set aside
Mix baking soda and citric acid together carefully. If you want, you can use a medical mask to ensure you don’t breathe in any fumes from mixing these together.
Slowly spray the essential oils on the baking soda and citric acid while mixing until you’ve used all 90 drops. It should fizz a little bit when the moisture touches the mixture, but if there is excessive fizzing you are spraying too quickly. The mixture should start to clump and look like the picture on the right above when it is ready to be put into molds
If necessary, you can add a small amount of water in addition to the oils to help bind the baking soda and citric acid together. Don’t use too much or they won’t fizz when they touch water
Put the mixture into a silicone mold- or you can press it into an ice cube tray
Let the bombs dry for at least 6 hours, then remove from the molds and store in a container with a tight lid
Drop into the toilet and fizz away!

These things are awesome. It is so fun to let them fizz and do their job. And they smell great. Who needs a scented candle in the bathroom when you have fizzy toilet bombs?

And you gotta love it when you can make a cute shape out of a cleaning product. I love my little hearts! I also made some cool star shapes and some plain cubes. But the hearts were definitely the cutest.

I might run out of these toilet fizz bombs quickly because they are so much fun too use… let’s hope I can exercise some self control and use them only when I need to.

Try making some yourself and let me know how it goes!

If you want to learn more about green cleaning- you should definitely check out my free ebook on green cleaning! All you have to do is sign up for my mailing list and you will get your copy free.

Supplies used in this post

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The post How to Make Homemade Toilet Fizz Bombs (Only Three Ingredients) appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.