First Aid Kit

I always have a 1st aid kit on hand, even if it's just the one in the bathroom closet. Make a custom 1st aid kit with essential oils and Instant Liquid Soap. It's easy. Keep one in your car, have an extra for your camping gear, keep one at work.

Mine contains:

a bar of soap-I prefer Unscented, but any of our scents will do
a Go Soap (aka) Waterless Hand Soap
Instant Liquid Soap
a Calendula Stik with Lavender Mint
a few LiXTiK Lip Balms: Lavender, Peppermint, and Clove Spice
Bandaids
cotton swabs
cotton bandages
tweezers
a tourniquet - it's like a giant rubber band and I've never used it.
tiny flashlight
an ace bandage
a small glass jar of plain clean water
Lavender Essential Oil
Small bottle of hydrogen peroxide

Replace the pharmaceuticals

Good Old fashioned remedies do the trick, when you have minor accidents. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, splinters, and any kind of tiny puncture wound.

Andy skinned his knuckle, while fixing the tractor. He sprayed the Waterless Hand Soap, made from the Instant Liquid Soap, on it right away to keep out germs and bacteria, so he could keep on working.

When he came in the house, he washed the scrape with bar soap and water, then sprayed some more Waterless Hand Soap on it. It closed right up, with no issues. This is how to avoid minor scrapes turning into abscesses.

The Lavender Lip Balm is a very versatile 1st aid kit addition. Great for sunburn and mosquito repellant.

The Calendula Stik is gentle enough for babies diaper rash and potent enough for soothing a bee sting.

Lavender Essential Oil and Water is an excellent burn remedy. Read about it here.

Hydrogen Peroxide-to keep tetanus away. If you or someone in your party accidentally comes in contact with a rusty nail. Immediately clean the wound and squirt a generous amount of hydrogen peroxide into it.

Choose from 5 different natural essential oil scents

Instant Liquid Soap is the perfect stovetop cleaner. It's gentle on your hands while being tough on built up, caked on grease. Click here to read How to Clean your Greasy Stovetop using zero waste natural soap methods

Tear open pouch at notch
Fill pouch with water to top of label. Gently stir.
Pour into a reused plastic bottle. Use.

The future starts now as you end single use plastic bottles. Click here

How to use your first aid kit

How to use your first aid kit made with Instant Liquid Soap and essential oils will become intuitive once you need it.

I slipped on a shell in the water, and sliced my thumb open on a camping trip in the West Everglades way out on one of the 10,000 keys in the Golf of Mexico. We canoed 9 miles out from Everglade City, which is a small fishing town at the bottom of West Coast Florida. I think the population is 70. One zero in that number.

We rented a canoe and a key as the camping spot. While canoeing out, 4 dolphins joined us. It was a magical experience. They swam and played with us for many miles through the mangroves. They would sit up on their tails, look you right in the eye and laugh. Then flip up and swim under the canoe.

After the 4-5 hour trip with many detours through the mangroves, and a lunch break, we arrived on our key. The first thing I did was remove my life jacket and walk around our tiny coast. Within minutes, I slipped on a shell and broke my fall with my hand, which sliced the inside of my thumb on the knuckle joint. It was a bloody mess and about a 1/2 inch long slice.

The 10,000 keys are an interesting place. The water is fresh water, and relatively shallow for quite a ways from the coast. Then suddenly it changes. It drops to I don't know how deep and turns to sort of salt water. You are out at sea. It's amazing and daunting in a canoe.

I rinsed my wound out with the everglades water. I then cleaned it with the best camping soap, fresh drinking water, and bandaged it. I changed the bandage 3-4 times a day. It healed nicely and I had a great trip. I have a small barely noticeable raised scar.

soap and water is a great anti microbial to clean out wounds quickly with a little sting.

How to avoid an abscess

How to avoid an abscess is easy. Be aware that minor splinters, pricks from bushes, or tiny skin punctures from your life adventures should be cleaned with soap and water immediately.

Abscesses are a less than pleasant occurrence. Abscesses usually occur with a very small puncture wound that heals over quickly before the wound is properly cleaned. A splinter, pricker from any kind of plant or tiny minor abrasion that is not properly cleaned can cause one. A microscopic piece of dirt or any kind of debris with the smallest bacteria can get trapped under a few layers of skin and remain unnoticed until the bacteria multiplies and becomes infected. The infection turns into a sore bump and can quickly fill with blood and a white sticky or smelly liquid. This is an abscess.

How to clean an abscess

How to clean an abscess is simple. Here is your tool list:

A clean washcloth
A clean dry towel
Clean hot water
A clean, non rusty sewing needle
Matches
Instant Liquid Soap in some sort of squirt bottle if you have one. If not, a pump bottle or spray bottle will work fine.
Clean cotton swabs
Clean gauze bandages and bandage tape

Abscess soak

If you or anyone you know develops an abscess, here are simple instructions to clean it out, so the road to wellness is a fast one.

Wash your hands with soap and water thoroughly, getting your fingernails, nail beds, fingertips, and nail beds before you get started.

By the time an abscess is noticed, it could hot and very tender to the touch, but angry and tough. Act quickly, and soaked it with a hot compress, which is a clean washcloth soaked in hot water and wrung out just enough to remain very moist, yet not dripping, which held heat. Gently press the washcloth on the abscess, until it becomes softer. Wring out and warm it up under hot water a few times if necessary and repeat the compress method until the abscess becomes less angry and a bit softer.

Get the sewing needle, light a match and put the sewing needle in the flame for a few seconds to sterilize it. Then wash the needle with soap and water.

Take the sterile sewing needle and gently puncture the top point of the abscess, by slipping the needle into the skin less than 1/8th of an inch. This should open a gateway for the infected white liquid and blood to escape. If possible, squeeze the abscess to get as much liquid out as possible.

Take the bottle of liquid soap in the squirt bottle and douse the opened and draining abscess. This should sting. Rinse with clean warm water and again squirt Instant Liquid Soap right in the open wound.

With the clean cotton swabs, gently clean up around the wound. Take another clean cotton swab and wet one end with more liquid soap to drip inside the popped abscess and around the edges.

Bandage with a few layers of gauze bandage and tape all around the edges. Repeat all of the cleaning steps and changes the bandage 3-5 times a day until the abscess is healed.