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Several months ago, we received a telephone call from a host family in the Bettina Network whose home is open for bed & breakfast guests.
She had an exciting experience cleaning and polishing her furniture. Not many of us get excited over such things these days. It has taken a couple months for us to share this with you because we were afraid to try her suggestion to verify her results. We’ve done that now and it is actually, really exciting.
She cleans and polishes her wood furniture every six months. How she does it is what’s at issue: she mixes olive oil with the juice from 1/2 lemon and rubs this into her wood furniture.
Having been conditioned by the petrochemical crowd and their fantastic marketing, we thought this would be a disaster. We asked a few people to try it before we set out on this project and their results were astounding – so, our turn.
We mixed one cup olive oil with the juice of 1/2 lemon, used 0000 steel wool and set about rubbing our furniture. Once we rubbed the furniture with the 0000 steel wool, (always in the direction of the grain), we wiped off the oil and the steel wool residue with a soft cloth and went back over the furniture with plain olive oil. We let the furniture dry overnight.
The next morning I fully expected to find little animals feasting on the oil residue and an oily ugly mess, but instead the excess oil soaked into the furniture and left a hard beautiful sheen. The results are phenomenal. The furniture is clean, bright, and has a shine that is real. Not greasy, nor slimy, nor anything like that, just a good, clean, hard, dry sheen.
The side benefits from this furniture cleaning and polishing expedition came when we looked at our hands. No rubber gloves were needed because we were using olive oil and lemon juice – neither of which would hurt us if it touched our skin. Our hands were beautifully soft because they had been nourished by the olive oil we used as furniture oil. Another benefit came from the house not smelling of petroleum distillates, a really foul smell. I sniffed around in the evening and couldn’t smell anything. We asked bed & breakfast guests if they smelled anything when they came in, they said no – nothing. I was concerned because I didn’t want the house to smell like a salad dressing, but that didn’t happen. The house had a nice, clean, fresh, smell.
A variation on this came from trying a substitute of lemongrass essential oil for the lemon juice. That is an essential oil which we’ve found has side health benefits. The results were not as dramatic as when we used the olive oil and lemon juice combination, but still very good. The smell was a major difference – probably because of the lemongrass essential oil – the house had a fresh, light sort of lemony smell. We didn’t pick that smell up with the olive oil and lemon juice but then lemongrass oil has an old wives tale with it which claims it is an excellent insecticide, so maybe that explains the smell.
Copying from an article on the internet “Lemongrass essential oil is analgesic, anti-microbial, antiseptic, astringent, bactericidal, carminative, deodorant, insecticidal, sedative, nervine and a tonic; in aromatherapy, lemongrass oil is used to treat acne, to repel insects such as fleas, lice, ticks and mosquitoes, to relieve muscle pain, indigestion, fever, disease, headaches, stress and nervous exhaustion.”
Read more at Suite101: Lemongrass Essential Oil: The Properties and Uses of Lemongrass Oil in Aromatherapy http://aromatherapy.suite101.com/article.cfm/lemongrass_essential_oil#ixzz0fEJAqYes
We are going to ask all Bettina homes which offer bed & breakfast to use olive oil and either lemon juice or lemongrass essential oil to clean their furniture in the future. We can’t see anyone objecting. The benefits are – less money spent on furniture polishers; no need for rubber gloves to clean your furniture; does not compromise your health; nice fresh, clean smell; beautiful furniture and possibly an insecticide side-affect; AND its benefits to the environment are immense.
Afterthoughts: The 0000 steel wool for the initial cleaning was our idea and it is not something that is a necessary part of cleaning the furniture. We are the only ones who used the 0000 steel wool, everyone else rubbed the olive oil and lemon juice combination onto their furniture with a soft cloth and rubbed the furniture until it was clean. They also wiped off the olive oil and lemon juice combination and followed that with rubbing plain olive oil into their furniture as a second step. Everyone let the oil dry overnight for an added benefit instead of wiping off the excess oil immediately and went over the furniture the next morning with a soft dry cloth. We all also found that the oil was gone from the furniture the next morning and the hard, dry shine was in place.
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