Nickie’s Nook: Oils and Books

Please note: Some of these links lead either to my Amazon affiliate page or my Doterra page. While you won’t pay anything extra for the products, your purchases will help support this blog

Using essential oils can seem overwhelming to any new oil user, but when you’re blind, it can feel even more so. In the following post, we’ll be discussing ways to make using essential oils as easy as possible, even when your eyes don’t work.

Where’s my lavender? Challenges with finding the oils you need

  Let’s face it, it’s hard to find things when you can’t see. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost things I’m looking for. Print labels aren’t any help to those of us with little or no vision. Granted, essential oils generally smell differently from each other, but it’s hard to remember all of the different oils. Telling Douglass Fir from Syberian Fir or Wild Orange from Tangerine isn’t very easy. And when you get a large number of oils, it gets more challenging. Fortunately, there are a few options.

My preferred method is to use a travel case with separate compartments for each oil. I came up with a system that makes sense to me. This case has 42 slots for 5 and 15ml bottles. On the top layer, I mostly stick to alphabetical order. The oils on this layer are the ones I tend to use the most. In the bottom layer, I continue to stick to alphabetical order, but I also organize by categories. For example, I put all of the citrus oils in the top left corner. Next, I put some of o

I did have to by a larger bag for oils I use somewhat less frequently. Those oils are ones I use in DIY projects, so I tend to have a sighted person available to help me identify them when I’m using them.

This method isn’t always perfect. I’ve accidentally dumped some or all of the oils out of the case. Given this, I have to admit it’s not a perfect solution.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI is an app for the iPhone which uses the camera to read text, scan barcodes, identify money and colors and complete other tasks. While Doterra’s oils don’t have barcodes, they can be scanned with the iPhone using the “short text” option. I mostly find this effective when examining oils from my larger case which holds many oils I use less frequently, but I admit that on some of the labels it isn’t as effective.

PenFriend

Some people use the PenFriend on lids of their oils. This gadget allows you to put a small sticker on the lid of the oil and create a recording which the pen associates with the sticker. When you scan the sticker, you’ll hear your recording.

The tried and true sniff test.

While smelling the oils isn’t always a perfect solution, it can help you figure out whether the oil is in the same ballpark as the one you’re looking for. Since it’s not always easy to scan the bottle with your phone, it can help to determine whether the oil is of the same type as the one you’re looking for. For example, I might smell an oil to make sure it’s citrus if I’m looking for grapefruit.

How much am I using anyway? Avoiding the challenge of diluting oils

When using essential oils, you almost always want to dilute your essential oils. This is because some oils can aggrivate your skin if used neat (directly on the skin without diluting them in a carrier oil first). First, let’s answer the question:What’s a carrier oil?

A carrier oil is an oil that’s not an essential oil and still has the fat in it. These can include fractionated coconut oil, jojoba, sweet almond, grapeseed, caster, evening primrose or rosehip. These oils literally carry the oil deeper into the skin and help keep it from evaporating away.

While carrier oils are wonderful to use, it can be tricky to know just how much essential oil to use and how much carrier oil to use. Fortunately, Doterra has many oils which are already diluted. They come in 10 ML roller bottles which contain essential oils diluted in fractionated coconut oil. You can just use the bottle to apply the essential oil. My favorites actually happen to be the Kids Oil Collection because they smell great and are already diluted to safe levels for a kid to use. That said,

How many drops did I get?

When I started using essential oils, the biggest challenge I faced was figuring out how many drops I’d gotten. It’s taken me two years, and I cannot say I’m perfect at counting drops, but I’ve gotten much better.

What helped me the most was practicing listening for drops to hit a metal sink. I started with a bottle of Wild Orange because it’s one of the cheapest oils, and used an empty sink. By listening to the sound as the drop hit the metal sink, I got an idea of how quickly the drops come out of the bottle. If hearing isn’t your thing, you can also catch the drops with your hand. If necessary, you can refridgorate the bottle of oil so when it hits your hand, it’s easier to feel it hit.

Once you have an idea of how fast the drops come out, you can estimate to the best of your ability. Also, depending upon how much water you put in your diffuser, you’ll be able to hear the drops of oil hit the water. In my case, the Doterra Pilot diffuser wasn’t large enough for me hear the drops, but the Pedal is. Still, once you get an idea of how fast drops come out, you’ll be able to guess how many drops are coming out. Be warned, however, the drops will come out at different speeds based on how thick the oil is.

While this works fairly well, when using oils internally (I can only suggest doing this with Doterra essential oils), you’ll want to be more precise.

The blessing of Drams

I’ve found drams are the most tried and true way to know how much oil I’m getting. A dram is a very small bottle, usually when I say dram, I’m actually referring to a 5/8 dram which contains 2ML, but writing dram is fa∵er. The dram has a much smaller orifice-reducer so it takes about 3 taps on the bottom of the dram (when it’s turned upside down) to get the equivalent of one drop. I like this method for adding essential oil to food or water because you really don’t need much for flavoring and

I choose to have someone else help me fill drams because of my tremours but I have blind friends who use the pipettes sold by Doterra to fill them. The nice thing about these pipettes over some that you might find on Amazon is that they are smaller. Some of the ones on Amazon are so large you could probably suck up half of a bottle without trying.

I’ve never made my own roller botttles, I prefer to have someone else with sight do that for me because of my tremors, but I’d imagine you could just estimate it like you might with the diffuser.

I hope these tips help you on your journey to using essential oils with or without vision. Even if you’re sighted, it might be nice to not need to turn mo then light if your diffuser runs out in the middle of the night!

If you’d like to get started on your essential oil journey, I’d love to help you out. Please visit my Linktree to get started. There are tons of my favorite oils and or Waze to contact me.