Lately, I’ve been playing a bit with natural disinfectants because chemicals in regular disinfectants scare the heck out of me.  Ever since the birth of my daughter, I’ve been cautious with the use of chemicals, but once she started crawling and putting everything in her mouth, I became almost obsessed with what’s in my household cleaners and disinfectants.

I’ve known for a while that tea tree oil can be used for disinfecting and I’ve been using it on cloth diapers for a few months now.  It’s worked very well for us when we had problems with yeast diaper rashes.  I’ve also used tea tree oil on skin blemishes and insect bites.

Tea tree oil has a very strong smell, so be prepared for that if you decide to buy it and have never used it before.  The smell does not last a long time though and if you use it to disinfect diapers, don’t worry, they won’t smell like tea tree oil after rinsing and drying.

More recently, I’ve started using eucalyptus oil from Wildroot Botanicals mixed with a natural cleaner for cleaning and disinfecting kitchen counters.  The smell of eucalyptus oil will definitely wake you up and clear your sinuses.  If you cloth diaper, you can also use the oil in the diaper wash.

Both oils – tea tree and eucalyptus – are quite expensive, especially eucalyptus.  However, they’re usually used in very small amounts so they last quite a while.  As for availability, tea tree oil can be found in quite a few stores.  I’ve bought tea tree oil at Costco and Zehrs (a Loblaws-owned supermarket store).  Eucalyptus oil is harder to find.  I would love to be able to buy it close to home in larger bottles.