Gardener’s Hand Scrub

The following is a guest post from Merissa from LittleHouseLiving.com.

Do you hear it? The birds have begun their yearly song…spring has arrived! On our little farm, this is a time of great preparation. I’ve started working on some simple meal plans that will get us through the summer when it’s too hot to want to cook much and when we are too busy to go to town often for groceries.

I’ve already planted my seedling starts and in just a few weeks it will be warm enough here in South Dakota to plant them outside in my garden.

I love to garden. It’s been my passion for many years to use my garden to provide as much food as I possibly can for my family. But of course, we all know that it’s not easy or clean work! We not only have a garden to sustain ourselves but we also plant extras to preserve food for winter and to sell at the local farmer’s market. By the end of the day I’m tired and full of dirt.

The signs of a good gardener right?!

That’s when I pull out my jar of Gardener’s Hand Scrub to clean and freshen up. It’s so simple to make with just a few basic ingredients! Today I’m sharing the recipe with you so that you can enjoy using it this summer just as much as I do.

Gardener’s Hand Scrub

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar (white or brown will work)
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
•  ½ cup coconut oil
• 5 drops tea tree essential oil

Directions

• In a medium bowl, mix together the sugar and the salt.
• In another bowl, melt the coconut oil until it’s liquid. (Or you can stick it in the microwave for a few seconds.)
• Pour the coconut oil over the sugar mixture and mix all the ingredients together until the sugar is thoroughly coated.
• Add a few drops of the tea tree essential oil and give the mixture another stir to incorporate it throughout, then pour the scrub into a container or jar that can hold at least 2 cups.

Store in your bathroom or wherever where you regularly wash your hands after coming in from outside.

The sugar and salt will scrub any garden goo from your hands.

The coconut oil helps to rehydrate your hands after you’ve worked with them and scrubbed them clean, and the tea tree oil is antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, and antimicrobial, so it adds several great properties to the scrub. You could also replace the tea tree oil with lavender essential oil since it has similar properties.

This simple hand scrub will help to keep your hands clean and free of dirt, no matter how much you work in your garden this summer!

Merissa Alink loves making the most with what she has and she blogs all about it on LittleHouseLiving.com. You can find her recipe for Gardener’s Hand Scrub and over 130 other DIY recipes in her book, Little House Living: The Make-Your-Own Guide to a Frugal, Simple, and Self-Sufficient Life, which is available on Amazon.