How To Clean And Reuse Essential Oil Bottles

It is wasteful to throw away high-quality essential bottles into your garbage when you can easily reuse them. I reuse my most of my essential oil bottles as they can be used to: –

• Make your own blends
• Make your own roll-ons
• Create a travel kit of oils
• Make mini spray
• Share with your friends, relative your favorite essential oils or your own blends.

Step 1

Carefully remove the label from the essential oil bottle. Most of the time the labels can be peeled off pretty easily. If not, you can:-

• Run some warm water into a clean bowl and use some gentle soap
• Remove the lid and orifice (reducer insert) and place those in the water to soak.
• Place the empty bottle into the water. Let it soak for 5 minutes.
• Remove the label by finding the seam and starting there. Use the soapy water to remove any residue. If any residue remains then use a drop of Lemon essential oil on the bottle and rub with your fingers. Rinse completely.
• Remove the bottle, cap, and orifice from the water, rinse and allow to dry completely before reusing.

Essential oils vary in viscosity (thickness). They can leave a sticky film on the inside of the glass bottles that can be impossible to clean with just soap and hot water. If so, you will need to move to step 2.

Source: Recipes with Essential Oils

Step 2

Fill a glass jar with Epsom salt. Place the bottles, caps, and orifices into the jar, cover, and let sit 1-2 days or until you are ready to clean them. I carefully rotate the jar around from time to time so the oils evenly mix with the Epsom salt.

Step 3

When ready, pull the bottles, caps, and orifices out of the Epsom salt. Shake out any Epsom salt that might be sitting inside of each essential oil bottle. Cover and hang onto your essential oil infused Epsom salts. You can reuse again for cleaning essential oil bottles in future or you can have an awesome therapeutic foot soak.

Step 4

Rinse the bottles, caps, and orifices with water and soak them in a container filled with water with 2-3 tablespoons of white vinegar. Let it soak for a few hours or overnight.

Step 5

Remove the bottles, caps, and orifices from the water and vinegar mixture. Gently scrub off any remaining label residue from the outside of the bottle and rinse them with water and air them to dry.

TIPS

Alternatively, to clean the inside of essential oil glass bottles, you can use a “solvent” that will dissolve the essential oil that remains in the bottle. High proof vodka or rubbing alcohol is a good choice to use as a solvent. Fill the bottle at least halfway, and let it sit for a few days. Every few hours or so, shake the bottle with the cap on. DO NOT consume the vodka mixture when you’re done.

If a bottle is especially sticky and will cost more in vodka to clean than the bottle is worth, it is better to set it aside to discard.