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Creative Escapes – Scheduling

by Melinda, in category COVID-19 Isolation, Useful

The isolation madness has set in and as a family who thrives on routine, we are all struggling with losing them. All our sports have been cancelled indefinitely. My husband is working from home. School holidays are in the second week and the weather hasn’t been particularly supportive of outdoor activity. That, my friends, is a recipe for unrest in this household! The lack of structure to our days is a big source of anxiety that is only magnified by the great unknown about how long this will last. A week is forever when you are 12 or under, so the idea that these restrictions might last until June, or beyond, is hugely unsettling for all of us.

Did I mention we thrive of routine? My oldest’s favourite question from the time he could talk is ‘what I going today?’ which was an economical contraction of where am I going and what am I doing today. Ten years later it’s still his favourite daily question, he just phrases it better now. His younger brother is much more able to go with the flow, although he does struggle with empty time and will fill it with sensory seeking activities like whistling, rolling all over the place and random squealing. Like I said, a recipe for unrest.

The elephant in the family here is gaming, tablets and screens in general. If my boys are left to manage their own time they would simply game all day. Trouble brews when their frustration gets to be more than they can handle, or the cooperative play dries up. When that happens we just end up with arguments that can get physical and most certainly require parental intervention. Knowing that this is inevitable at the start of the day means that gaming has become the kid Vs parent battle ground, which just contributes to the household unrest.

I’m an analyst by nature, training and occupation. I can see patterns of behaviour in my boys a mile off, which only serves to cause me frustration and may or may not have been the cause of the level in my Gin falling substantially. I can see it coming but am powerless to divert it, despite my best efforts. I knew we needed an isolation routine – STAT! Having said that I don’t want to have to drive everyone’s day and nor do I want everyone clock watching. That would only bring angst of a different nature. Instead what we need is an order of events for the day, a way to chunk the time up so the day has some landmarks between breakfast and bedtime.

After a lot of Googling and listening to TED Talks this is what I came up with. There are two types of day, a busy day and a slow day. We all need down time, especially given the current circumstances, so I don’t want to over do the scheduling. The rule is no more than two slow days in a row and no more than three slow days a week. Given that all our days look the same (we call every day ‘Blursday‘ now because they all blur together), this plan runs Monday to Sunday. Weekends aren’t so special any more in isolation!

A busy day is chunked into:

    • Early Morning
    • Late Morning
    • LUNCH
    • Early Afternoon
    • Late Afternoon
    • DINNER
    • Quiet Time
    • BED TIME

A slow day is chunked into:

    • Morning
    • LUNCH
    • Afternoon
    • DINNER
    • Quiet Time
    • BED TIME

The next challenge is what to fill all this time with. During school term time this is a much easier thing, but the holidays have left us with a LOT of empty hours. This is what I came up with:

Connection
The boys are missing their friends – heck, so am I! It’s important to help them keep in touch and we have lots of technology to help them do that. This is especially important for teens as their social circle plays such an important role in their mental and emotional development. the idea that their friends are in touch without them can make teens very anxious. I have to say since we started this as a regular activity thier moods have been vastly improved. Suggested activities for connection are:

    • Driveway drawing – visit a friends house and draw kind messages on their driveway.
    • Make card – and send it to someone. Grandparents especially love this one.
    • Send happy mail – draw a picture or make a small gift and send it to someone you miss.
    • Plan and send a parcel – we have made a few care parcels for friends and family that include things like favourite games, baked goods, toys, colouring books etc
    • Video chat – oh my am I forever grateful for Zoom! We have had many tours of the house conducted over Zoom and friends have eaten lunch with us or played games.
    • Phone call – its so old fashioned in these modern times! A phone call can really satisfy that connection itch. Hearing people’s voices is very comforting.

Reading
Both of my children and school aged, so reading is a bit part of their school activities. It is also a very good brain stimulant and both of them need busy brains or they are not easy to live with! I think it’s important for adults to read too or we can use this time to read the news, limiting how long you look at that a day is important to keep overwhelm in check. Suggested activities for reading are:

    • Read a book – my youngest sets a timer for 20 minutes and sits on our bed to read. The time is often ignored, I think he just likes the sense of time and accomplishment it gives him.
    • Research – use this time to look something up. Learn about an art technique you want to try. How to do something technical, or training exercises for something.
    • Word Games – we all love the Wordscapes app for word puzzles. Board games like Scrabble are good too. Anything that encourages expanding vocabulary is acceptable.
    • Lexile Quiz – my youngest uses the Scolastic Lexile program at school for tracking reading progress. It offers the opportunity to do comprehension quizzes on completed books and is a great tool for measuring progress and knowing when to cheer him on.

Learning
I have long known that both my boys need busy minds. School usually fills that need, so during the holidays they need to find alternatives. Good options for learning activities are:

    • Times Table Games, or any other maths based game.
    • Online Classes – we use Udemy for online classes and right now a lot of sites are offering discounts. Find something of interest and dive in!
    • Cooking / Baking- this is a double win as it feeds us too. Cooking involves a lot of planning, reading and maths. Its a great stimulation activity.
    • Journal – I have encouraged both of my boys to write about this historic experience. Nothing overwhelming, just their thoughts, feelings and activities during isolation. There is a brilliant ‘Time Capsule’ template you can use for this task available here.

Creative
Being creative or engaging in imaginative play are so important for good mental health, especially during time of social isolation. Creating something out of nothing comes with a great big side of serve of accomplishment and happiness. Its well worth the effort. Creative activity options for us include:

    • Drawing – draw a picture, of anything! Just use pencils, crayons, textas anything you have to colour, draw or create. We have a good collection of colouring books and my oldest is participating in the Brooklyn Library Sketch Book Project, which is an awesome way to encourage creativity. You can read about it here.
    • Building – we have built a lot of things, forts, obstacle courses for people, remote control helicopters and cars and targets for Nerf wars.
    • Lego Challenge – I have a board on Pinterest we use as a source of inspiration for Lego challenges. It includes things like chair lifts for mini figures and self propelled cars. The Lego Masters TV series is excellent too.
    • Hot Wheels Cars – you would think we were past this at 9 and 12, but no! We have seen some epic Hot Wheels tracks and events held here recently.
    • Baking / Cooking – Creative cooking often includes decorating cakes and biscuits to share with friends and neighbours, its a great creative outlet.

Outside/Exercise
My children are an excellent study in how exercise effects mood. If we go more than a day without some sort of high impact, joint compressing exercise we ALL suffer! That’s way this one is needed on busy and slow days.

    • Bike Ride – we are lucky enough to live close enough to Grandparents to visits there. We also ride to friends places for socially distant visiting or just around the block is good too.
    • Walking – I walk with the boys as far as this arthritic body can, often it’s enough to prompt them to find the next destination without me. A walk down to the servo to get a slushy is a favourite, as is visiting the park with the balls or remote control helicopters.
    • Soccer – any ball sport would do, in this house we are soccer devotees! We have a goal in the backyard and a park close by so this one is on the agenda often.
    • Online PE Class – there are lots of PE classes for kids offered online. Our favourite is ‘PE with Joe’, which you can find on You Tube.

Rest
It’s easy to value busy over not, so it’s important to plan for some rest. We all need down time and isolation is exhausting mentally, even it if leaves us sedentary a lot of the time.

    • TV/Tablet – oh boy are we avid consumers of You Tube! Its not my thing but the boys could kill hours there. For me it’s Netflix.
    • Quiet Alone Time – we are all needing to go hang out alone in our rooms and just be. Me especially 😉
    • TED Talk – if you haven’t discovered TED yet, now is the time! There are talks on any and every topic, check the talks out at here  or here for talks especially for kids.
    • Podcast – we all enjoy podcasts, they fill space in your brain while your body rests. Our favourites include Story Pirates and Wow In the World. Find them on Apple Podcast or any other podcast subscription app.
    • Cuddles/Heavy Blanket/Fort – everyone loves a cuddle and that heavy blanket is amazing for calming down! If you’ve never tried one read about them here.

Plan
It’s easy to feel helpless during isolation and I really wanted us to have something to show for our time in lock down and for the boys to have a sense of accomplishment when all this is over. Also, the human condition loves nothing more than something to look forward to, so having a big project to get back to is really helpful when empty days are all that’s ahead. These are the activities we chose for our big deal jobs:

    • To improve your space – both boys want to make radical changes to their bedrooms, including painting walls and moving furniture. That needs a plan!
    • Garden – we have an active veggie garden, and both boys have some ideas for improving our outdoor space, including adding a fire pit and ball nets.
    • Project / Large Art – tie dying is on the agenda as is acrylic pouring on canvases. What else have you always wanted to do?

So what are the ‘rules’? How do you use this idea? For us it looks like the below, changing it to suit you is highly recommended. The idea of all of this is to provide an order of events, or a structure for the day, rather than a clock based schedule. Sometimes it’s a challenge to get onto a task, other times they get so engrossed the first task lasts all day – and that’s ok! The whole point is to feel accomplished and happy and the end of the day and to have something to look forward to tomorrow. For us that means:

A busy day looks like this:

    • Breakfast must be eaten by 10pm
    • You must have a plan for the day by 10pm
    • Lunch must be eaten by 2pm
    • Only ONE slot is for Xbox / tablet

The plan for the day must include:

    • One of both of Reading and Learning
    • Jobs / Helping
    • Exercise
    • One or both of Connection and Creating
    • One slot must be for jobs and helping

A slow day looks like this:

    • Only ONE slot is for Xbox, unless more is agreed with Mum and Dad
    • The plan for the day must include:
    • Jobs / Helping
    • Exercise
    • Lunch must be eaten before 2pm.

Every day things that need to be done:

    • Make your bed
    • Get dressed (unless a PJ day is agreed)
    • Brush teeth in the morning
    • Open your curtains
    • Turn your lights and diffuser off
    • Empty or load the dishwasher

I hung the guidelines, some ideas for filling the plan and a plan for each boy in our dining room. There is a bit of Velcro on each slot so they can stick up their selections for the day.  You can download these sheets to make your own here.

To some of you this will seem like a ridiculous amount of over kill. For us it has been a life saver and a bringer of peace to our household. We followed this fairly closely for the first week and after that they got the hang of it. The boys were planning their days without prompting and were inventing landmarks in their days for themselves. When it falls apart and we have a day that requires the liberal application of chocolate or alcohol (or both!) we just go back to a week of being strict and they are back on track again. I hope sharing helps families find their own isolation peace. Let me know if you found anything here that works for you. 🙂

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Creative Escapes – Beer Bread

by Melinda, in category Uncategorized

Today’s activity needed to involve feeding my bottomless boys, as the Tupperware container I promised to keep full is now empty! Last Sunday I baked White Chocolate and Cranberry cookies and they are long gone! I was going to have a go at some artisan, no-knead bread (the last time I kneaded dough my arthritic shoulders were less than amused), but the supermarkets around us are totally sold out of yeast. Great minds think alike it seems!

We also recently had a fridge incident where it decided to be overly helpful and freeze a heap of things – including a couple of stubbies of beer. So I had these partially frozen and thawed beers that shouldn’t be wasted – beer bread is the perfect solution. See what I did there? All those peeps who were about to say baking bread is a waste of perfectly good beer need not bother.

To make the bread you will need:

    • 3 and a 1/2 cups of Self Raising Flour.
    • 1 375ml stubby of beer. Lighter flavoured beers make a mildly flavoured bread, but any sort will do.
    • 2 Tablespoons of honey or castor sugar.
    • Melted butter to brush the top.
    • 1 teaspoon of salt.

Then do this:

    • Add all dry ingredients to a large bowl.
    • Pour beer over the top and mix until a ball forms.
    • Pat dough into a baking dish or tin. It won’t rise much so it doesn’t need to be over-sized.
    • Brush the top with melted butter.
    • Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes, or until brown on top and sounds hollow when knocked on.

I’m pleased to say it was delicious.  So much so that both boys burnt their fingers trying to pull it apart before it was cool! That’s why the only photo I have to offer is this sad half pulled apart one – not nearly as glamorous as the nestled in a basket, magazine worthy one I had in mind. Then again, pulled apart is just how we roll.

So if you are looking for a yeast free bread alternative, I encourage you to give this one a go – if you can bear to part with the beer!

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Creative Escapes – Crochet Cats

by Melinda, in category Uncategorized

 

I asked my beautiful Mother In Law to make me some crochet rounds once and instead of doing that for me, she gave me a set of crochet hooks for Christmas! Luckily for me it came with free lessons – and it very quickly became a new hobby. I really enjoy the rhythm of it. When you master a pattern it can be methodically hypnotic and I find it very calming. I also like how portable it is, I can take a ball of wool and a hook anywhere! Plus it is really good therapy for my arthritic hands.

I have a few projects on the go. I started a blanket a few weeks before we were asked to ‘shelter in place’ that I’ll share in a later post. It’s an ongoing project that keeps me busy in the evenings. Given that I’ve really been enjoying crochet I popped into my local newsagent, in the last days popping anywhere was acceptable, and bought the January 2020 edition of  Love Crochet magazine. It had the cutest little cat toy on the cover and included the wool and materials to make her, plus I have always wanted to try making toys.

It took me a few days of hooking, and a fair bit of ‘frogging’ (that’s where you ‘rip it, rip it’ and unpick your stitches), but I finally finished her. So cute!

I gave her to the little girl who lives next door, who apparently named her ‘Mophie’, which is Sophie in cat language. She was promoted to bedtime companion immediately, which I am assured is the highest honour. I’m calling that a success!

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Creative Escapes

by Melinda, in category Useful

It’s April 6th, 2020 and for the last couple of weeks my little family of four has been adjusting to a life lived inside our medium sized, one living area, 1970s home.

The COVID-19 Pandemic, declared on March 11,  has changed life for most of the world, including us. Only my husband leaves the house every couple of weeks to do grocery shopping and the chemist run. My boys stopped attending school a couple of weeks ago and have been doing ‘school from home’ via a combination of video link ups, audio classes and worksheets sent home from school. We have started school holidays now, so our routine will change again in the absence of classes.

To give you the picture of social isolation life in South Australia, this is how things are right now:

    • Australia’s international borders are closed. Only Australian citizens or residents returning home are allowed to enter, and they must observe 14 days quarantine period.
    • South Australia’s borders are closed. Everyone is stopped at the border, only those returning home are allowed to enter, and they must observe 14 days quarantine period.
    • Concerts, tours, festivals and any other sort of entertainment events all cancelled.
    • Weddings, funerals, family celebrations and holiday gatherings are all limited to 10 people.
    • We are under a ‘shelter at home’ order, meaning we should only leave the house for essential supplies or medical needs.
    • My husband is working from home, full time.
    • Grocery shelves are empty of staples like pasta, flours and cleaning products. Panic buying is a thing and a lot of people have been stock piling (unnecessarily).
    • There is tape on the floors in shops to help queuing shoppers keep a distance  of 2m (6ft) from each other.
    • Hand sanitiser, face masks and anti-bacterial soap are sold out. Everywhere.
    • Toilet Paper is sold out, everywhere because somehow Australia’s got the idea it was imported and therefore would be hard it get. It’s made domestically and is only hard to get because morons are stockpiling it.
    • Manufacturers, distilleries and other businesses have updated their lines to help make visors, masks, hand sanitiser and PPE.
    • There is concern for shortage of PPE for healthcare workers and a shortage of ventilators for the critically ill.
    • Cinemas, gyms, bars, night clubs, hairdressers, beauty salons, entertainment venues and pubs are all closed.
    • Playgrounds, outdoor gyms and skate parks are closed.
    • The soccer and BMX seasons (a big deal for my family) are suspended indefinitely, along with every other sport.
    • Cafes and restaurants are serving takeaway only, if they are open at all.
    • Meetings or groups of more than 5 are banned, expect for people living in the same house.
    • Public gatherings are restricted to 2 people.
    • Police are empowered to enforce social distancing rules, including $1000 fines or arrest.
    • The Australian Federal Government has handed out the biggest financial aid package in Australian history.
    • Private hospitals  have opened to accommodate the overflow of COVID-19 patients, after elective surgery has been suspended indefinitely.
    • There are daily Press Conferences daily from Prime Minister Morrison and Premier Steven Marshall and  other Health Department officials, updating death, infected and recovery numbers, plus any updates to the social distancing measures.

These measures are not as dire as in some other parts of the world, but have certainly been sufficient to make big changes for our household. So, given all of that I need a distraction and something, actually a lot of somethings, to keep my hands and brain busy. To that end, I’ve decided on a few things. I’m going to be:

    • Baking often enough to keep one large plastic container full of treats.
    • Keeping a paper journal about our day to day experiences.
    • Learning something new, starting with expanding my crochet horizons.
    • Making and sending cards to keep both busy and connected.

So stay tuned people -this could be the start of a long and beautiful blog series in some very uncertain times.  🙂

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How to Avoid To Do List Overwhelm

by Melinda, in category Organising Things, Useful

One of the things I hear a lot of my friends saying is that its hard to keep track of all the to TO DO THINGS and that is something I’ve had a bit of success with so I thought I’d share.

My to do lists are long, seemingly never ending. Messy, never in the right order and the longer they get the less I want to look at them, especially if it goes over the page!

BUT, at the same time I want it all out of my head. It gets crowded in there and the Negativity Committee that has regular meetings in my head can get out of hand if I don’t write lists.

Now when it comes to lists and organising I’ve tried it all – planners, diaries, pretty note books, electronic thingys that bing – all sorts. The pretty planners and books were intimidating. Mine are never pretty enough. The bing-ing electronic things are so annoying I turned them all off, plus if its not on one page for me I can’t hold a picture in my head, so it wasn’t helping.

After all of that I was still saying ‘I got all these things I want to do’ and feeling overwhelmed.

With the help of a trained professional counsellor I worked out that looking at it all at once is just too much – for anyone. There is too much to do AND, more importantly, I can only do what I can with the time I’ve got, which means it has to count.

There were things I wanted my lists to do for me – one keep track of everything so I don’t forget and two tell me what needs doing RIGHT NOW, so I stay on top of things.

To do that I’ve broken my lists down – one for each of my spinning plates – my boys, home, me, work, business etc and EVERYTHING goes on there as it pops into my head. In no order.

Then as things get more urgent – and need doing in the next couple of days – or I want to do them soon, they go onto the RIGHT NOW list.

The RIGHT NOW list is the only one I look at every day and I keep it short, only two or three things that aren’t crossed off at a time.

It helps me prioritise, feel more in control and less overwhelmed. You can down load the Things I Want To Do Pages template for my to do list pages. I hope you find them useful 🙂

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Looking After a Chronic Illness

by Melinda, in category Chronic Illness Things, Useful

Truth About Chronic Illness

I like to think of my diagnosis as something I have to care for, rather than something I am or have. It doesn’t define me – although its so consuming it often feels that way. Having a chronic diagnosis is like being given a badly trained, enormous, ill-tempered and exotic dog. Think Newfoundland crossed with a Mastiff. Now imagine knowing nothing about caring for dogs, having no time to train one and living in a small apartment with a your family of 4. Your job is to keep it healthy, train it somehow, stop it from destroying everything, still do all your usual life stuff and leave the house dressed and with your hair brushed. Imagine walking it. Its a constant fight for control as it drags you off the path repeatedly and an exhausting effort to get back on track. Now imagine there is not one, but two enormous, untrained, ill-tempered dogs. That’s me.

Looking after a chronic illness is a big pain in the butt, and, for me, pretty much everywhere else as well.

It’s reduced mobility, sore feet, elbows, knees, hips, wrists, fingers, and everything else in between.

It’s not sleeping and being uncomfortable. Its not sleeping because you’re uncomfortable.

It’s chemist bills in the hundreds range – every month.

It’s an unrelenting tide of monthly blood tests and injections.

It’s treating the rash drug number 6 gives you.

The specialist and doctors appointments are time consuming, constant, never ending and expensive.

The torrent of well meaning yet completely annoying advice is relentless.

Looking after a chronic illness means saying no to things you want to do. A lot. It means letting people you love down, repeatedly, so you’ll be functional for school assembly tomorrow.

It’s forgetting where your shoes are and when that appointment was because your brain has been replaced with a useless amount of cotton wool.

It’s hating how useless you are and fighting hopelessness because you are overwhelmed by helplessness.

It’s falling asleep in the middle of your favourite TV show you’ve waited all day to watch with your husband, because the fatigue has finally got the better of you.

It makes you lose perspective, your temper, you way and almost your mind.

One thing chronic illness is NOT: is terminal. For that I am very grateful.

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My Oily Record Book

by Melinda, in category Essential Oil Things, Useful

Do you have your favourite essential recipes scribbled on Post-It notes? Written in 5 different notebooks (because you can’t find the first one again when you need it)? Do you have oil information about blends, properties, how-tos and other useful stuff you want to remember pinned, tagged, stuck, torn out or scribbled in the back of your diary? Have you lost that awesome website you found ages ago and want to tell your friend about?  Yup. Me too!

That is why I created ‘My Oily Record Book‘. I actually didn’t mean to. I set out to create a place for me to keep all of my essential oil bits and pieces and somewhere in there it become something to share. I knew what I wanted to make, but boy was it hard work! Finding the folders alone took hours and they were way more expensive than I anticipated. In the end I had to have them made and after all of that they are PERFECT and exactly what I wanted. Plus it’s pretty 🙂 Just look…..

If you are new to essential oils the Oily Knowledge section provides information on:

    • how and why essential oils work,
    • what to look for when purchasing,
    • dilution ratios,
    • carrier oils,
    • where and how to use and apply essential oils,
    • oil properties and
    • what containers to use.

If you are not new to oils this section provides all that information in one place to make it easier to not only refer to yourself, but to share confidently with your new oil users.

There is a section on Roller Blends, Diffuser Blends, Skin & Beauty and Cleaning. Each section provides my favourite recipes and space to record yours. There is also a Wish List section with space to record the oils and materials you want to buy, why and even who or what for – its easy to forget at order time why you wanted an oil!

The book is designed to help you organise all those oily thoughts and ideas and keep track of your favourite blends, uses and wish list items.

The book is A5 size, small enough to be portable buy big enough to be able to write comfortably in it and still read the text. There are 110 thoughtfully designed pages, Printed in full colour on good quality, heavy weight paper (100gsm), to make sure you pen doesn’t bleed through to the other side (I hate when that happens!).

It contains 5 dividers to separate the sections and comes bound in a custom designed, frosted, two ring binder, to allow you to easily add pages, articles or clippings yourself when needed.

If you are interested in essential oils, a novice or an essential oil super hero then this book is for you! I’m pretty sure this is your new best oily friend.

You can purchase your very own copy here in the shop or using the link below. *EDIT* I have extended introductory price of $30 until July 15th! **

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The Truth About Looking After A Chronic Illness

by Melinda, in category Chronic Illness Things, Useful

Truth-About-Chronic-Illness

I like to think of my diagnosis as something I have to care for, rather than something I am or have. It doesn’t define me – although its so consuming it often feels that way.

In my experience, having a chronic diagnosis is like being given a badly trained, enormous, ill-tempered and exotic dog. Think Newfoundland crossed with a Mastiff. Now imagine knowing nothing about caring for dogs, having no time to train one and living in a small space with a your family of 4.  Your job is to keep it healthy, train it somehow, stop it from destroying everything, still do all your usual life stuff and leave the house dressed and with your hair brushed.

Imagine walking it. Its a constant fight for control as it drags you off the path repeatedly and an exhausting effort to get back on track.

Now imagine you have not one,  but two enormous, untrained, ill-tempered dogs. That’s me.

Looking after a chronic illness is a big pain in the butt, and, for me, pretty much everywhere else as well.

It’s reduced mobility, sore feet, elbows, knees, hips, wrists, fingers, and everything else in between.

It’s not sleeping and being uncomfortable. Its not sleeping because you’re uncomfortable.

It’s chemist bills in the hundreds range – every month.

It’s an unrelenting tide of monthly blood tests and injections.

It’s treating the rash drug number 6 gives you.

The specialist and doctors appointments are time consuming, constant, never ending and expensive.

The torrent of well meaning yet completely annoying advice is relentless.

Looking after a chronic illness means saying no to things you want to do. A lot. It means letting people you love down, repeatedly, so you’ll be functional for school assembly tomorrow.

It’s forgetting where your shoes are and when that appointment was because your brain has been replaced with a useless amount of cotton wool.

It’s hating how useless you are and fighting hopelessness because you are overwhelmed by helplessness.

It’s falling asleep in the middle of your favourite TV show you’ve waited all day to watch with your husband, because the fatigue has finally got the better of you.

It makes you lose perspective, your temper, you way and almost your mind.

One thing chronic illness is NOT is terminal.

For that I am very grateful.

 

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What are essential oils & why do they work?

by Melinda, in category Essential Oil Things, Useful

Oil Base Types WEB

Essential oils are plants that have been distilled into a highly concentrated liquid. They therefore contain the compounds that keep plants alive and let them thrive. In humans they support body systems, health and well being. Explaining how and why essential oils work could involve a detailed chemistry and biology lesson and even a chunk of  neurology but none of that is something I can clearly explain – lets agree it’s complicated. It does make really interesting reading if you Google it though.

Put very simply essential oils impact on our brains and bodies because they have very small molecules, so small they are able to penetrate cell membranes, which allows them to move through blood and tissues. When inhaled or applied, these tiny molecules directly impact the Limbic System of the brain, which controls the most basic functions of our bodies. The reason why you can breathe without having to think about it (no blonde jokes please) is because the Limbic System does it for you. Anyone who has smelled something awful and gagged has experienced the link between aroma and the Limbic System.

The Limbic System response to essential oils is to release neurochemicals that can relax, stimulate, sedate and so on, depending on the properties of the oil being diffused. As the Limbic System is directly connected to control of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, memory, stress and hormone levels, this link makes essential oils a powerful tool. It’s easy to see, with this lens of modern science, why essential oils are Man’s first and oldest medicines.

It takes only seconds for inhaled oils molecules to reach the brain, minutes before they can be found in the blood stream and less than half an hour before they have affected every cell in the body. This is why purity matters. Synthetic fragrances will not elicit the same response as a 100% pure oil. The question of purity is a whole other blog post, just know for now that it matters and probably those supermarket ones are not Limbic System whisperers.

All that means that essential oils are able to provide profound psychological and psychological effects. They can be used in many different ways and will provide different benefits, depending on how they are used and applied. Each essential oil offers different properties and benefits derived from the flower, tree, fruit, herb, root or leaf they are made from. In general it has been found that oils derived from flowers benefit the skin, those from citrus benefit mood, those from trees are good for relief from pain and herbs are good when we are unwell. Keep this in mind when building oil blends to get the greatest benefit out of both those little oily powerhouses AND the magic of your Limbic System!

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Why I Started Using Essential Oils

by Melinda, in category Essential Oil Things, Useful
Lavender is the Gateway Oil

Today I’m starting a challenge to post about my experiences with essential oils this month, starting with why I got involved….

I started using essential oils over a year ago now and since then there are been a quiet, but steady, revolution happening in our house. Oils are now are our go-to for cleaning, medicine, stress relief and pretty much everything else – but why did I choose oils?

*big breath* I am chronically ill and have been diagnosed with both Psoriatic Arthritis and Fibromyalgia.

Just learning to spell them was a challenge, living with them is like having two enormous untrained dogs in the house that happen to be covered in three inch long spikes. It’s painful, it’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, completely annoying, and really inconvenient.
I’m learning that it’s a recurring cycle of working hard to feel normal, over doing it a bit and then having to stay in bed for a few days to recover. In short it sucks.

To add to the suck-y-ness the medications necessary to manage this condition are frighteningly toxic, and devastatingly, not 100% effective. Including those that manage inflammation and pain. That means that, despite being stuffed full of toxic medications, I was still reaching for Panadol and other things to manage the symptoms – Every. Day.

At the low ebb of this time I was invited to an ‘oil party’ and introduced to an epic rainbow of alternatives to over-the-counter pain relief, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medications I was taking. Better than that – they worked! These little bottles of oil provided relief from the joint pain and took it from screaming at me constantly to background noise. I simply cannot put into words how much relief these pretty little powerhouses provided to me then, at such a low point in my life.

At that point my focus had been largely on me, I hadn’t considered using them for my children. My youngest is sleep challenged,   bed times were a complete nightmare!
He is nearly 9, and is yet to sleep through the night. Enter essential oils and a sleep roller blend that is nothing short of pure magic. It transformed bedtime from a nightly war zone into something we all enjoy, a calm, loving and peaceful goodnight. By now I was completely captivated by the potential of essential oils and being analytical by nature, and a lover of learning those first tastes of success lead me to investigate further into the benefits of oils and, in particular, the opportunity to minimise the chemical load of everyday living, for me, and my family.

Part of the treatment for my condition leaves me immune suppressed, which means what is left of my immune system needs to be really efficient. That means I need to work to ensure that as little as possible presents a challenge to my body, so reducing our incidental use of harsh and toxic chemicals is key to my recovery process and ongoing well being. That it must just be good common sense to reduce using that stuff – right?!

When I collected all my cleaning products into one space and cast a critical eye over them it seemed to me that I was ‘cleaning’ with products that had ingredients that
were compromising our health and were also damaging to the environment. Some investigation online proved that there is no job that Lemon oil, Thieves and bi-carb cannot do equally as well, and often with less physical effort involved – a big plus for this broken body. Plus I use a glass bottle, that is re-used instead of ending up in landfill. The more I learnt about what I we had been buying, the more disgusted I was with how  damaging those products are, and to be honest, they didn’t clean that well either.

That was the start of the revolution!

Once that mindfulness arrives it can’t be reversed. Instead of replacing products as they empty I’m investigating natural essential oil alternatives. It hasn’t been difficult and despite those little bottles feeling like a big investment they are saving us money with every grocery shop. Less stuff is coming into the house and less empty packaging is going into the recycling. I am being more mindful of the environmental impact of our family and how we live. My house smells AMAZING and I am starting to tackle my skin care and makeup use – the toxicity of those products is just plain scary and honestly, Lavender and Frankincense is so delicious as a face cleanser.

The usefulness of essential oils is limitless and if one option doesn’t provide the result you were after there are a rainbow of alternatives to try. My boys both have a set of oils for those bedtime head/tummy/elbow/leg aches and a diffuser to help soothe bedtime anxiety. We are all sleeping better – ah-mazing!

I’m sure the revolution will continue as I learn more and we share more success with essential oils. I am so very thankful I found them, I’m experiencing less pain every day and that is a blessing.