June 3, 2018

Oils and Water DON'T Mix

There is nothing we can't clean. We've concocted an all natural cleaning product for anything that requires cleaning within the home. 

We were pretty chuffed when we concocted a product that will remove tar on clothing, even after its dried on there for 12 months. That same particular product will remove Saffron and Turmeric stains also.

However, this post is about oils, essential oils. We've been working with essential oils for a lot of years. We, like most, have our favourite oils that we like to work with. With so many DIY recipes out there they all call for essential oils to fragrance them. The scent/fragrance from certain flowers should be extracted with a difference process in order to obtain the true fragrance of the flower but thats for another post.

Pre Green Potions days, and we were running Green Domestics, I recall receiving a phone call to quote a property in a beautiful leafy suburb outside Brisbane. This property had the most gorgeous view and therefore plenty of glass windows and doors to take advantage of the natural scenery. I was so happy I could use my DIY cleaner to clean the glass and have a glorious view while cleaning. I used Orange essential oil to add to the recipe I had found on the internet and mixed it as per the recipe. Oh gosh, disaster! The view to die for wasn't the view to die for anymore. The glass was smeared and nothing I did would clean the smears on the glass. I shook the bottle to blend all the ingredients as the recipe said to shake it before each use....I shook it vigorously and still some. The beautiful view out the window wasn't so soothing now. Gosh, how could this have gone wrong. Ugh, why didn't this recipe work? Well, because oil and water DON'T mix of course. Needless to say I left that job extremely disappointed and worse, so was my client. I was more disappointed I didn't try the recipe in my own home first, silly me. Every recipe I made thereafter was tried in my own home first, then friends tried it, then I took it on our cleaning jobs. Pleased to say all Green Potions products have been extensively used before any concoction was available to the general public.

So, you find a recipe thats great for cleaning the bathroom. Yay, terrific! You gather up all the ingredients, measure them out and start mixing. Wow, too easy. After mixing them up give them a good shake and your right to go! 

WRONG! STOP RIGHT THERE!

Back in primary school I recall learning that oil and water don't mix. Well, guess what? They still don't mix. Thats not to say you can't mix them but the solution needs a little help in order to be able to blend them.

So take it from me. If you mix all your ingredients together then add your chosen essential oils and give it a good shake then use it to spray on the kitchen benches or bathroom surfaces your wasting your essential oils. Lets face it, essential oils are not a cheap ingredient. 

There aren't too many recipes I've seen that list a preservative. 

Your DIY concoction contains water (or this is relative to water based recipes), it MUST have a preservative added. 

Now back to the oil and water don't mix. After you've taken great care to make up the recipe as directed, you have a product containing water and oils. The oil will seperate from the water. There is no question about it, they will seperate. The oils will float on the top of the solution and will never be on the bottom where it is drawn up by the trigger spray. Therefore, your oils remain on the top of the solution, so, they are wasted. 

Now back to the preservative. It won't be long before your DIY concoction begins to smell off. Particularly in the warmer months of the year. You MUST add a preservative, preferably a natural preservative. 

When you make your DIY concoction place it in a clear bottle and you will see what we are talking about. You'll find that product won't remain clear for very long either. 

We are now concocting water soluble oils however we are only doing a limited variety of scents.

We've been extracting the scent from specific flowers, Frangipani, Gardenia and Jasmine. This is being carried out in a way the french did centuries ago. Most oils are extracted through distillation or solvent but these particular flowers are too delicate and the true fragrance of the flowers can't be obtained through distillation or solvent extraction. We'll post more about this later. 

February 4, 2018

Welcome

Welcome to our blog. If you have any questions or comments we would love to hear them. Feel free to email us.

I started an eco friendly cleaning business back in Brisbane in 2007. Green cleaning products available were limited therefore we didn't have many choices of what to use. 

Most people still had the conventional chemical based cleaning products so we supplied our own cleaning products and equipment from the onset.

All was good until we began doing rental cleans. The green products just wouldn't keep up the standard of cleaning and in some cases even the chemical based products still had us working too hard. Most people would agree that cleaning limescale (aka soap scum) from shower screens is almost basically impossible. Every rental clean demanded that the limescale be removed. Sure, we'll just get the magic wand out we thought. 

On all the regular cleans we only used natural products but taking on more and more rental cleans and using chemicals (because the green products wouldn't do the job) had to have an adverse affect on us. So I took to the kitchen sink and began formulating. When I wasn't working I was researching, formulating and testing. 

The beauty was I had no end of situations as to test and trial my formulations. Each rental clean we did provided new cleaning situations. Sometimes we didn't even think it was possible to make some of the dire situations look better. We had ensuite so full of mould and mildew it had spread to the walk in robe of the master bedroom. Makes you wonder how the tenants weren't ill, but maybe they were.

2008 Green Potions was born! The first product was the Potion No.4, Cream Cleanser. Many hours have been spent on research and trialling and testing all of these fabulous Potions.

Stay tuned for more....