Home Remedies for Athlete’s Foot

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Homemade Athlete’s Foot Powder?

10 Drops Lavender Oil (Essential)

3 Drops Clove Oil (Essential)

5 Drops Tea Tree Oil (Essential)

5 Drops Thyme Oil (Essential)

½ Cup Cornstarch or arrowroot

2 Tablespoons White Cosmetic Clay

10 Drops Cypress Oil (Essential)

How Do You Make Homemade Athlete’s Foot Powder?

Step 1 – Mix the cornstarch/arrowroot with 2 tablespoons of cosmetic clay in a container that has a lid which fits tightly.

Step 2 – Add the oils and mix. The powder will be considered antiseptic if you add the thyme and tea tree oils.

Step 3 – Allow the powder to sit for 3 days so that it absorbs the oils

Step 4 – Apply the powder to the affected area(s) of your feet twice a day.

Homemade Calendula Ointment

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Homemade Calendula Ointment?

1 tablet or capsule of vitamin E

3 tablespoons of fresh calendula petals

1/3 cup of olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped beeswax

How Do You Make Homemade Calendula Ointment?

Step 1 – Crush the calendula flower petals with the back of a spoon.

Step 2 – Put in a pot on the stove and add the olive oil.

Step 3 – Simmer the mixture for approximately 2 hours on low heat.

Step 4 – Strain the liquid into a bowl and ensure you get all of the oil from the petals by pressing on them with the back of a spoon.

Step 5 – Return the liquid to heat and put the stove on medium.

Step 6 – Add the beeswax and stir until the mixture melts.

Step 7 – Remove the mixture from the stove and allow it to cool.

Step 8 – Pierce the vitamin E capsule and squeeze the contents into the mixture and mix.

Step 9 – Store the contents in a jar (at least 4.5 oz in size) and seal shut.

Step 10 – Store the mix for at least two weeks in a cool location.

Homemade Poison Ivy Treatment

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Homemade Poison Ivy Lotion?

½ cup water

Bentonite Clay

12 Drops peppermint oil

12 drops lavender oil

½ teaspoon salt

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Homemade Poison Ivy Drying Paste?

10 drops lavender, cypress, chamomile, and/or geranium oil

water

1 tablespoon finely ground oatmeal or bentonite clay

How Do You Make Homemade Poison Ivy Lotion?

Step 1 – Dissolve the salt in water in a small bowl.

Step 2 – Add enough bentonite to make the mixture creamy

Step 3 – Mix in the lavender and peppermint oils

Step 4 – Apply to the affected area on your skin.

How Do You Make Homemade Poison Ivy Drying Paste?

Step 1 – Put enough of the oatmeal or alternatively bentonite clay in a small bowl to cover the affected area the poison ivy has affected.

Step 2 – Mix 10 drops per tablespoon of oatmeal or clay into the mixture

Step 3 – Lightly sprinkle water over the mixture

Step 4 – Cover the affected area of your skin with the paste and let dry. Rinse off with water after it has dried and reapply as you need to.

Homemade Insect Repellent

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Homemade Insect Repellent

Small pitcher

Clean spray bottle

1 Oz of a Carrier Oil (Any massage oil or olive oil will work)

15-20 drops of citronella oil (essential)

15-20 drops of lemon oil (essential)

15-20 drops lemongrass oil (essential)

15-20 drops of eucalyptus oil (essential)

How Do You Make Homemade Insect Repellent

The steps to make the insect repellent are pretty simple:

Step 1 – Mix the oils with the carrier oil in a small pitcher or mixing bowl.

Step 2 – Pour the mixture into a spray bottle

Although this recipe for insect repellent is homemade, you should not use it on small children or infants due to the citronella oil

Homemade Cough Drops

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make Cough Drops?

Candy Thermometer

2 Saucepans

Wax paper

20 Drops of Tea Tree Essential Oil

3 ½ Cups of Brown Sugar (Dark Preferred)

20 Drops of Eucalyptus Essential Oil

2 Oz. Dried Horehound Leaves (or 6 oz. Of Fresh Leaves)

How Do You Make Homemade Cough Drops?

Step 1 – Boil 3 cups of water in a sauce pan or in the microwave

Step 2 – Pour the boiling water over the horehound leaves in another pan.

Step 3 – Steep the mix over a low heat for 30 minutes

Step 4 – Strain the mix into another saucepan and then mix in the brown sugar.

Step 5 – Stir the mix until the brown sugar has dissolved.

Step 6 – Bring the mix to a boil leave on the heat until it reaches 295 degree Fahrenheit on the candy thermometer.

Step 7 – Mix through the eucalyptus and tea tree oil and allow the mix to cool

Step 8 – While the mix is still warm, roll small balls from the mixture and place on wax paper.

Step 9 – After the drops have hardened, wrap individually in plastic wrap.

After you have successfully made your first batch of homemade cough drops, you can experiment with a touch of candy oil of varying flavors to make cough drops of varying flavor(s).

Bronchitis Chest Rub

What Ingredients Do You Need to Make the Bronchitis Chest Rub?

5-10 Drops Wintergreen Essential or Eucalyptus Oil

30 Crops of a Massage Oil such as Avocado, Almond, or JoJoba Oil

Small Bowl to Mix the Rub

Stirring Device

How Do You Make the Chest Rub?

Step 1 – Pour approximately 30 drops of the massage or carrier oil into a small bowl.

Step 2 – Pour or drop the essential oil into the bowl

Step 3 – Mix the oils together using a stirring device such as a spoon or whisk.

How Do You Use the Bronchitis Chest Rub?

Step 1 – Rub the oil on your or the affected person’s chest.

Step 2 – Cover the chest with cloth or a thin towel.

Step 3 – Place a hot-water bottle or heating pad on top of the cloth.

Step 4 – Relax and let the rub take effect.

Note:

Home remedies are not a replacement for seeking a medical professional’s advice. They can help you save money compared to over-the-counter medicines. Green Life Guide provides home remedies for consideration, but does not recommend that you use them in place of seeking professional medical assistance.

Online Fax Services

#1 Online Fax Service – PopFax

PopFax is free to use for the first month and then shifts to a $5.49 monthly service charge. When you use PopFax, they provide a local fax number and let you send and receive faxes through their online fax service. They will also keep your documents that are uploaded to the service stored for up to 30 days in the event you desire to reuse them on other faxes.

#2 Online Fax Service – GotFreeFax

GotFreeFax is a free online fax service that lets you send up to two faxes a day of maximum length of 3 pages a fax. You can upload PDF files, doc or docx documents, and images to use with the service. After the fax is delivered, an email response is provided to you if using the free service. You can alternatively choose to pay $1.99 per fax if you don’t have a recurring need to send and receive faxes online.

#3 Online Fax Service – MyFax

MyFax is one of the fastest growing online fax services on the Internet. Their service is tailored to home users and all sizes of businesses. Unlike some of the other services, MyFax lets you send and receive faxes through your email so you save money on both ends of fax usage. They offer a 30 day free trial, let you keep your existing fax number to use with the service, and offer tiered packages of use for a flat monthly fee depending on your individual or company needs.

Online Fax Service Tips

Some tips to consider when using an online fax service are:
- Try to use Arial or Verdana font faces with a size 12 or larger to display better on the fax.
- Always use a cover page since you don’t know how many incoming faxes are received on the other end of the fax.
- Faxes transmit at a 200 DPI resolution where your printer will normally print at 600 DPI or greater.
- If you are scanning documents to fax, choose black and white, halftone to make them more compatible with the fax format.
- Portrait layouts on documents tend to fax better than non-standard layouts.

Green Life Guide Tip #1 – Drive Smart

When you drive aggressively it wastes gasoline. This includes speeding, stop and go driving, and rapidly accelerating. When you drive in this manner, your gas mileage can decrease up to 33 percent when on the highway and by 5 percent when driving in town. You’ll see savings between 13 and 88 cents a gallon when gas is around $2.65 USD a gallon.

Green Life Guide Tip #2 – Drive Under the Speed Limit

Each vehicle has a little bit different optimum speed to achieve the best fuel efficiency. As a general rule of thumb, your car’s gas mileage will decrease at an exponential rate as you increase speed over 60 mph. Every 5 mph that you drive above 60 is equivalent to paying about a quarter more per gallon for your gas. The potential savings are between 19 and 61 cents a gallon.

Green Life Guide Tip #3 – Get Rid of Extra Weight

Now we’re not talking about removing permanently installed seats here, but every 100 pounds of excess weight in your car or truck will reduce your fuel efficiency up to 2 percent. The smaller your car, the greater the impact will be. The savings you’ll see will be between 3 and 5 cents a gallon.

Green Life Guide Tip #4 – Use Cruise Control and Don’t Leave Your Car Running

When you use cruise control on the highway, you keep your car going a constant speed and will save gas from not continually accelerating and decelerating. Similarly, when your car idles, you are not getting any fuel efficiency out of your vehicle. The bigger your car or truck, the more you need to pay attention to excessive idle times to increase your gas mileage. At the same time, if your car has an overdrive gear, you should use it. It keeps the vehicle engine speed at the lowest RPM necessary, reduces wear and tear on your engine, and saves gas.

Green Life Guide Tip #5 – Tune Your Engine

If you car is not properly tuned or is not passing required emissions testing for your state, then you could be losing up to 4% of the potential gas mileage from your vehicle. You do have to realize though, that if you improperly tune the car this can get even worse. If you have a bad O2 sensor you gas mileage can suffer by up to 40%. Your overall savings by keeping your car properly tuned can be up to 11 cents a gallon.

Green Life Guide Tip #6 – Keep Your Tires Pumped Up

This tip was made most famous by President Obama, but you can increase your gas mileage up to just over 3% by maintaining proper tire inflation. Every 1 PSI that your tires are under-inflated results in a .3% decrease in gas mileage. If you don’t know what the right inflation pressure is, most cars have a sticker that is located on the driver’s side door jamb or in the owner’s manual for the vehicle. This can differ from the rating on your actual tire, so it is worth checking what the recommended rating for your car is supposed to be. You can save up to 8 cents a gallon with proper tire inflation.

Green Life Guide Tip #7 – Use the Right Motor Oil

Its not a huge improvement in gas mileage, but if you use the proper grade of oil for your car, you can save 3 to 5 cents a gallon. A good example is if your car engine is rated to use 5W-30 and you use 10W-30, you will lower your gas mileage up to 1 to 2 percent.

Green Life Guide Tip #8 – Effectively Plan Your Trips

When gas was under $2 USD a gallon, most Americans did not do a lot of route planning like our European friends do. If you take a little fore thought and plan to combine trips into one long one then you can save a significant amount of fuel by avoiding starting your car multiple times from a cold start. You can end up using twice the amount of fuel by starting your car from a cold iron state. When you are taking a long trip and have been in the habit of using a roof rack, see if you can fit your luggage inside of your vehicle. By using a roof rack, you can decrease your fuel efficiency by up to 5%.

How Do You Prepare for a Professional Energy Audit?

Before your professional energy auditor shows at your home, you will want to list all of the known problems in the house with the heat, air conditioning, and condensation. You will also want to have a year’s worth of utility bills for the auditor to use in helping to establish what they should focus on during your home’s audit. If you can’t get this material, the audit can still occur, but you will just pay more money if the auditor has to test everything. Other than that, the only other thing you will need to do to prepare for the audit is make sure you can be home when the auditor visits.

What Will the Professional Home Energy Auditor Do?

The auditor will first collect your old bills and make notes of the pre-existing problems that you point out to him or her. Then, they will conduct a survey of the outside of your home to note the size, number of windows, wall area, etc. The auditor will then take a look at what the behavior is of the people living in your home. These details will consist of how many people are home during the day, your average thermostat settings, are all of the rooms used?, and how many people live in your house. Most auditors will allow you to walk around with them during the survey so you can ask questions.

Choosing an Energy Auditor

Just like choosing a doctor, you will want to find someone that you can trust for inspecting your home. Your electric or gas company may offer a service or refer professionals to you. Also, you can normally find companies that offer auditing services listed under “Energy” in the phone book. Before you hire the auditor, you may want to consider asking for references to see if previous clients were satisfied with the service.

Once the auditor is done with your home energy audit, you will receive a written report making recommendations for improvements you can make in the house to improve its efficiency. Taking these actions with other green home tips will help make your home more efficient and can reduce your monthly cost of living.

Tips to Go Green at Work

Go Green Tip #1: Reuse Copy Paper

We’ve all seen the trash can filled with printouts of documents that weren’t just right. Instead of throwing the paper into the recycling or regular trash, keep the paper to reuse for note taking and other office needs before you get rid of it. You’ll save money on notepads, and just might think twice before printing materials that you don’t necessarily need in hard copy.

Go Green Tip #2: Use a Coffee Cup

If you are like many office workers and enjoy your morning coffee or tea, then buy a coffee cup or mug to re-use instead of getting a Starbucks cup every day. Its a small step you can take, but you’ll save a little money, and you’ll waste less resources while getting your coffee fix for the morning.

Go Green Tip #3: Use E-Mail

Try to use electronic communication and documents over the regular mail whenever you can. You will reduce the amount of paper that you use in the office, and save money on postage.

Go Green Tip #4: Use Recycled Ink for the Printer

Depending on how your company manages IT resources, you may not have much of a say in this department. If you do, however, look for a local office supply store that sells ink to refill your printer cartridges. It will be cheaper, and you will reduce plastic waste created from the printer cartridges that are used up.

Go Green Tip #5: Buy Recycled Copier Paper

Seek out and find companies that sell recycled copier paper. The quality is just as good now-a-days, and the price is equivalent now across the board.

Go Green Tip #6: Save Packing Material from Received Mail

Now, if your office gets a lot of incoming mail this might not work, but if its a moderate to light level, consider saving some of the boxes and packaging material to re-use when your office has to mail packages.

These are just a few tips to help you go green at the office, but even if you can only do one it will be the first step to your helping make the Earth a greener place to live.