Basic Essential Oil Information

 

Essential oils are a vital part of the Green Skunk Deodorant. We spent a lot of time researching the oils in our product before putting them into the bottle that you buy. And we learned a lot about the oils along the way…

Recently, I found this great article about things you should know about essential oils. It’s a great summary! And if you have any interest in EO, please give it a read.

One thing they didn’t describe well though is what an Essential Oil IS. The article stated it’s not an oil – and they were right. It’s not oil. Oil, by definition, is a non-polar chemical substance that is a liquid at room temperatures and that has a water loving end and a oil/fat loving end. Common oils are olive oil, gasoline and of course butter. This is a picture of a triglyceride.

Essential oils, on the other hand, are comprised of parts of the plant that do not like water – no water loving parts in these! They have been used in medicinal, food and religious applications for centuries and have many different means of extraction. A common use that most of us use? Perfume (well, at least the very expensive natural perfumes that is).

Because essential oils don’t like water, you have to have a carrier substance to dilute and disperse them in… usually another common oil, like olive or sweet almond. Or, in our case, grain alcohol. And, for Green Skunk Deodorant, the grain alcohol has the added benefit of also killing the stink causing microbes in addition to what the essential oils do.

I’ll be talking about grain alcohol next time – stay tuned! And please keep enjoying the sweetest smelling Skunk around!

Auburn/Opelika Alabama

 

 

 

 

The second new state to join the Skunky party is… Alabama!

The Mother’s Nook at the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika Alabama now has all 3 Skunky scents in stock! Please click on their logo above to go to their Facebook page for more information about location and hours.

And a big WELCOME to all of our Alabama friends!

 

Monadnock Food Coop

 

Our newest retail location is also our first out of state location!

A big Skunky welcome to the folks in Keene, New Hampshire at the Monadnock Food Coop!

All 3 of our fabulous scents are now available in their shop. Please stop by – and tell them that the Skunk sent you! And have a very Skunky Day!

Skunk Spray

 

This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Green Skunk Deodorant will NOT make a dog sprayed by a skunk smell like flowers. In fact, we haven’t tried our spray on a dog and have no idea if it would work.

However, there are a few things that you can do if your dog happens to have an encounter with a skunk of the smelly variety.

First things first – don’t bring a skunked dog into your house, car, dog house… The oils that make the stink will transfer everywhere and then those places will also stink.

Second, change into clothes that you don’t mind tossing out. I’d also probably wear rubber gloves, too! Then, give your dog a bath (outside if possible – skunk smelling bathrooms are not very popular)! It might help to use paper towels to soak up the oil on the dogs fur first and then bathe well.

There are numerous products on the market that help on the smell removal. However, if your dog just got sprayed, you probably don’t want to wait long enough to go buy some… So, mix up the following recipe:

1 quart 3% hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 teaspoon doggie shampoo or dish soap

Mix in an open container (it will fizz) and then wash your dog in this. (Best to wash your dog in doggie shampoo first and then use this mix.) Be very careful about getting the mix around the face. Soap burns dog eyes just like it does people and hydrogen peroxide will make a dog puke – probably not something you’d like to happen right about now. Wash this mix in, let it sit for 5 minutes or so and then rinse out. Follow by another round of doggie shampoo. Dry your dog in a towel that you don’t mind tossing out either. The smell will be greatly reduced, but it will probably still smell a bit.

My old dog got sprayed one time and we used this recipe. It helped! But, he still had a faint odor about him… And, I goofed and right after the spray event, brought him into my apartment and all of those oils came right in, too. I had to burn candles for days to get rid of the smell.

http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/skunk.htm

 

 

Glass Bottles – The Skunky New Look

The Skunk has new bottles! (And much better pictures!) View the “before” pictures with my mediocre photography skills…

And the after picture from my talented photography friend.

The new bottles are MADE IN THE USA and are GLASS. No more chemical polluting plastic for us! (Well, the sprayer is plastic but we’ve yet to find a way around that.)

Why the switch? Honestly, it is simple. It is because plastics are bad. Remember a few years ago? There was a big to-do about BPA in plastics being bad. And so baby bottle companies and other places put on a show of taking the BPA out of plastics and how that made their plastic safer and better. And we bought into it and our babies were A OK drinking milk out a plastic bottle.

But then, we realized there was more to the issue. The real question was – what was the BPA replaced with? In March, the Mother Jones magazine published a fantastic article talking about this very issue. And the news isn’t good. In fact, it’s down right scarey.

Bottom line – don’t use plastics if you can avoid them. Whatever you do, don’t heat anything in the microwave in plastics. Avoiding them is a great goal, but even things like canned foods have it – plastic lines the cans. Makes those green peas seem super healthy now right (and the peas and the plastic are heated in the canning process) doesn’t it?

So, after much searching we finally found a US made glass bottle that didn’t cost a whole lot more – and we made the switch. We did it because we really don’t want plastics in the stuff that we use and we want you to be as healthy as you can while using our products. It’s the responsible thing to do and it’s the healthy thing to do.

Please enjoy our new product design. Expect to be seeing it on your favorite store shelves as the stores reorder. And here’s to continuous improvements and steps toward a healthy and green life.