Essential oils are worth investing in when you consider how many ways you can utilize them in a survival scenario!

First Aid
Herbs have long been considered a great alternative to traditional modern medicine. Essential oils can serve the same first aid purposes but have a longer shelf life, take up less storage space, and can be more potent. There are lots of concerns about making “healing” claims with essential oils so I would recommend researching which herbs would be helpful to store in your first aid kits and replacing them with equivalent essential oils. There will definitely be some good ones for healing stomach pains, soothing pain, sore muscles, skin burns/irritations, etc.

Cleaning Supplies
You can make laundry detergent, dish detergent, all-purpose cleaners, etc. Instead of having to store spares of all of these items just store some basic core ingredients and a few key essential oils. Some of the best oils to use for cleaning recipes are:
– lavender essential oil
– lemon essential oil
– pine essential oil
– cinnamon essential oil
– Thieves® essential oil blend
– Purification™ essential oil blend

Personal Hygiene Products
Many people like to make their own homemade soaps, lotions, toothpastes, etc. to have more control over the ingredients, to save money, and just to have an overall better product. Imagine if you could make your own products in an emergency situation, you could use them to barter, or just enjoy your own supplies without having to store so many different products.

Mental Well-Being
One of the things we have learned by practicing emergency preparedness situations in our annual 7 Day Challenge is that it can be really mentally taxing on the entire family. There are a lot of oils that help you to be calm, relaxed, sleep better, etc. Wouldn’t that be helpful in an emergency?

So… would you rather buy tiny little bottles of essential oil that take up almost no space, or multiple, bulky, commercial  products that might have their own side effects? Seems pretty simple. For more information on how you can use essential oils, check out Food Storage Made Easy!

Featured Image via Honolulu Media / Flickr