If you’re looking to start storing your essential oils and perfumes at home, welcome to your ultimate guide! You know that if you’ve spent money on the good oils ie: HBNO, then you need to give them the very best spots to last as fresh and potent as possible. Getting my first essential oil set and the excitement of using it, but a few fragrances faded because I didn’t know the basics of fragrance care. And now, having worked through my fair share of learning the hard way (and gaining a lot of personal experience) here’s what I’ve learned are the best places to store my collection of perfumes to keep them smelling amazing.
In this blog post, I’m going to share with you some of the best places around your home to store your essential oils and fragrances to keep them nice and durable. This is the first installment of how to organize your scents, what to avoid, and how to keep your favorite HBNO oils as fresh as when you bought them!
1. The Importance of Proper Fragrance Care
Nature’s concentrated extracts, each essential oil has its properties and scent. Choosing the right storage location for these oils is to keep these oils potent and aromatic. Exposure to light, temperature fluctuations, and humidity impact fragrance care. The hard way I learned this: when I inadvisedly stored my HBNO eucalyptus oil on a sunny shelf, the crisp scent went away. The right care of an oil can give the difference between an oil smelling vibrant, and one smelling off.
2. Cool, Dark Places: Your Essential Oil’s Best Friend
Cool and dark are the best places to store perfume. Essential oils, like everything else, are not indestructible and can be degraded by sunlight and heat, which is why places like a linen closet, bedroom drawer, or a dedicated essential oil box are so ideal. Here are some top cool, dark locations:
- Bedroom Closet or Drawer: The spaces keep the light off of the oils and keep a stable temperature. So long as you keep your HBNO favorites to lavender and tea tree, just make sure to keep them tucked away.
- Linen Closet: Essential oils tend to perform well in a linen closet that stays cool. The drawer organizer ensures the bottles stand because they are organized by scent.
- Dedicated Essential Oil Box: For essential oils, you have a special storage box with light-protected compartments. I just put one in myself and I love it for keeping my HBNO oils organized and easy to get to.
3. Avoiding Humid Spots: Why Bathrooms Are a No-Go
An oil’s worst enemy can be humidity. The biggest mistake that I made was keeping my HBNO peppermint oil in my bathroom for convenience. The scent was no longer fresh over time. Important essential oils can be easily degraded in high-humidity areas, like the bathroom.
Instead, choose these dryer rooms such as a bedroom, closet, or office room. You should keep the essential oils collection safe from moisture so you need to design a specific shelf or draw.
4. The Magic of a Medicine Cabinet for Scent Organization
While bathrooms aren’t perfect spaces for storage, a medicine cabinet in an out-of-the-way, cool, dry room can be just the place for fragrance care. Oils sit upright and secure in medicine cabinets. And this is what I love about this storage – since it’s visible I can see all my HBNO scents and pick up the one as I please.
HBNO frankincense and chamomile — two of my go-to’s — remain fresh supremely here and now it’s a morning ritual to pick a scent as I begin my day.
5. Creative Storage Solutions: Use a Drawer Organizer
Storing essential oils is quite practical in drawer organizers. It allows you to fit everything in places like individual compartments so you can arrange your oils by scent or purpose so they all stay in place. Here’s how I set mine up:
- Sort by Fragrance Category: On one side, are uplifting scents like citrus oils from HBNO, in the middle are calming oils like chamomile and lavender and on the other are grounding scents like frankincense. It’s great because it’s easy to find what I need.
- Add a Silica Pack: In humid locations these help to soak up excess moisture. I love that they’re easy to spot and that they help keep my oils fresh.
6. A Dedicated Shelf in the Bedroom or Office for Your Essential Oils
This can be an easily accessible display of your essential oil collection if you have a shelf in your bedroom or office that doesn’t get direct sunlight. I keep a small bookshelf with my favorite HBNO oils to add a tinge of natural decor to the room.
Thanks to seals and labels on your HBNO bottles, you can even label them with the scent and the date you bought them… to make this setup even more organized.
7. Use a Mini Fridge for Ultimate Fragrance Care
So some diehard essential oil users store their oils in a mini fridge. While not necessary, this will prolong the life of citrus oils which oxidize quickly. However, if you live in a warm climate and you have a tendency to have indoor temperatures high, this is an excellent setup.
I have found my use up my mini fridge though, and from what I can tell my HBNO lemon and orange oils have stayed fresh for months as long as I am using them, and as a cool down from time to time.
8. Portable Options for Scent on the Go
Small dark travel cases are lifesavers for travel. My favorite replacements are HBNO eucalyptus and peppermint, protected in a case so that they don’t see light or temperature changes.
9. Maintenance Tips: Keeping Your Essential Oils Fresh Longer
Once you’ve found the perfect storage spot, a few extra steps can help keep your oils fresh:
- Close Bottles Tightly: Air is not kind to the oils. Always close the caps after use to preclude oxidation.
- Rotate Your Stock: To keep your collection new, use older oils first. On the label, you could add the purchase date so you could then track their age.
- Check for Signs of Oxidation: Inspect your oils regularly and check for color changes or any sort of altered smell. Always a good thing about the new bottle, it’s the one great excuse to shop HBNO!
Conclusion: Finding Your Ideal Essential Oil Storage Locations
With these storage tips, your HBNO essential oils will remain smelling fine. Keep in mind however that if you’re stashing them in a linen closet, in a bedroom drawer, or even in a mini fridge, a little care goes a long way to fragrance. Love the process of organizing and finding crazy neat places to put your HBNO collection, have fun with keeping your collection fresh and vibrant!
Here’s to more fragrant adventures, your home filled with the incredible scents of great quality essential oils!
