12 Great Uses for Empty Essential Oil Bottles

Anyone else have a TON of empty essential oil bottles laying around? As you probably know, glass bottles and jars can be quite expensive which is why I like to save and reuse my empty essential oil bottles. But the bottles aren’t doing any good if you aren’t using them! So let’s explore some of my favorite ways that you can use your empty bottles!

Before we reuse the bottles, let’s remove the labels! I learned this cool trick from my Grandma who I call the ‘Queen of Essential Oils’.

Removing Essential Oil Labels

The first thing she taught me was how to take a regular bottle and make it look like the ones in the picture above.

1. Simply peel off the sticker label
2. Put a drop of lemon oil in your palm and roll the bottle across your palm to remove the sticky residue

This should remove almost all of the sticky label residue. If there is anything left, place the bottle in some warm water with soap and the rest should wash right off.

That’s it… it’s that easy to get a clean bottle!

Removing the Orifice Reducer

For most of these uses, you will want to remove the orifice reducer in order to reuse the bottle. There are a few days to do this.

1. Use a butter knife and slide it between the bottle and the orifice reducer and carefully try to pry the 2 parts away from each other. While this is the more frugal option, it’s definitely not the easiest.
2. Use an essential oil tool to easily pop the orifice reducer off of the bottle. You can get one HERE.

Ok so now you have removed the label and orifice reducer, let’s talk about some of my favorite ways to reuse empty essential oil bottles!

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Uses for Empty Essential Oil Bottles

Use the Bottle as a Sneaky Air Freshener

Even when your essential oil bottle appears empty, the fragrance is still there! Take off the lid and place the bottle in a concealed place to keep things smelling fresh. Here are some ideas:

• Under the kitchen sink near the garbage can
• In your linen or clothes closet
• In your laundry room
• In your car
• In your coat/shoe closet
• In the bottom of your garbage can
• In the garage
• Near stinky sports equipment

Make Your Own Essential Oil Blends

The essential oil company I get my oils from makes their own blends but I like to make my own custom blends too! One of my favourite blends is equal parts of lemongrass essential oil and white fir essential oil mixed with some fractionated coconut oil. I use this blend to help with the discomfort I get in my legs from time to time and it works amazingly well!

If you are interested in making batches of diffuser blends, I have some recipes you may like:

• Fall Diffuser Blends 
• Tangerine Diffuser Blends
• Sandalwood Diffuser Blends 
• Bergamot Diffuser Blends 

Tips:

• If you make your own custom blends, you will want to add the orifice reducer back to the bottle after your blend is made.
• Make sure gently shake the bottle before use.

Make Diluted Oils for the Little Ones

Sometimes diluting essential oils can be a pain. Use your empty bottles to dilute the essential oils you use more often on the kids. For infants dilute I drop of essential oil in 1 tablespoon of carrier oil. For children, dilute one drop of essential oil in 1 teaspoon of carrier oil. Great carrier oils are facationated coconut oil and grapeseed oil. Learn more about carrier oils HERE.

Tip: When applying essential oils on little ones, try applying it to their feet and then cover with socks. This will help prevent children from rubbing the oil in their eyes. If you are applying them to their chest, be sure to cover with clothes.

Use Your Favourite Essential Oils in Every Room of Your House

I have storage boxes for my essential oils and while some oils live in that box, the others seem to migrate to other rooms of the house like the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The problem with that is when they are scattered, it can be hard to find the bottle when I need it.

Solution: Take an oil you use in multiple rooms of your house such as lemon. Use your empty essential oil bottles and create small bottles of lemon to have in your bathroom, kitchen etc.

Make Sample Bottles

We all want our friends and family to be able to have essential oil experiences. Use your empty bottles to create a small supply of essential oils for your loved ones to have.

Tips:

• Be sure to include information about the oil when giving essential oils to friends so they know what they have and how to use it properly.
• Remeber to put the orifice reducer back in the bottle so your loved ones can get just a drop or two at a time.

Make Spray Bottles

These little bottles can be used for all types of sprays. Whether is is a room spray, a cleaning spray or why not use it for something like hand sanitizer? You can find spray tops on amazon HERE.

Tip: This works best with 15ml bottles

Essential Oil Travel Kit

An essential oil travel kit can be used any time, not just for big trips. We all want to have our essential oils with us so instead of taking full bottles of essential oils with you on your next trip, make small bottles to take with you. These are my favourite essential oils for road trips! This is one of my favorite ways to use empty essential oil bottles.

Tip: Be sure to try and store your essential oils out of the sun when traveling.

Carrier Oils To Go

If you have ever used a carrier oil you know that it can get messy. Taking a carrier oil with you somewhere can be a nightmare! Simply fill your empty essential oil bottles with fractionated coconut oil, grapeseed oil or another carrier oil of your choice and save yourself the mess!

Tip: Save yourself the mess when trying to pour the carrier oil into the empty bottle and use a small funnel to make the process easier. You can get a funnel HERE.

Make Your Own Epsom Salts

Even when you think your bottles are empty, they usually still have some oil in them. My grandma also taught me that you can put your empty bottles in a container of Epsom salts to have an essential oil infused bath. Tiffany from Stuff Parents needs explains how to do this here. Now relax in the tub with your homemade essential oil bath salts!

Save the Last Drop of Oil

Sometimes you can see a little bit of essential oil left in the bottom of the bottle but no matter what you try, you just can’t get it out. In this case you have a few options. For all of these options you will want to remove the orifice reducer first.

Use a q-tip: This is a good method if you want to apply the oil to a direct area.

Use cotton balls: This is another great way to make a small portable air freshener.

Carrier oil: Add a few drops of carrier oil into your bottle. This acheives 2 things: 1) it dilutes your oil for you 2) it allows you to use up all of your oils without any waste.

Cute Christmas Tree Ornaments

Any essential oil lover would love an essential oil ornament on their tree! Find a pretty ribbon, loop and tie it around the neck of the bottle and voila, you have a cute ornament in less than 2 minutes! This would also work for displaying essential oil bottles at a presentation.

LED Essential Oil Lights

Now this is creative! I would have never thought to use my empty essential oil bottles to create a pretty string of lights! These lights would be so cute for the holidays but would also be cute hanging from your office or when doing essential oil presentations. I have to admit I have never tried this one but it’s just too cool not to mention! Check out this easy how to video!

There you have it 12 great ways to use empty eo bottles. Have you tried any of these? Which uses do you use most often? I would love to hear from you! How do you use your empty essential oil bottles?