Clean, Green Living in 3 Cheap, Easy Steps
Part 3: Discouraging Bugs, Treating Boo-Boos
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In this last installment of the series examining inexpensive and natural alternatives to the many household products people spend so much money on through the year, I want to look at the basic summertime first aid kit.
My family lives in the “deep woods” that Deep Woods OffTM was invented to de-bug. We have lots of company during the summer season, adults and children. There’s not much one can do about nasty encounters with aggressive poisonous snakes (copperheads are much more aggressive than timber rattlers, who live in the area but are hardly ever seen) or bone breaks or serious puncture wounds or cuts. Those just have to go to the ER, best thing to do is make that happen as quickly as possible. But there are a host of lesser injuries and situations that can be treated adequately at home, without the fancy, expensive products that contribute so much to a weekly grocery bill.
In the first installment of the series I listed the basic ingredients to purchase – brand name or generic (I get generic, but brands aren’t that much more expensive) borax, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, basic soap flakes (or liquid soap made from your disintegrating bath bars), and added ammonia. In the second installment I gave some recipes for laundry soap, kitchen and bath scouring powders, drain cleaner, surface disinfectants, etc. Now, using the same ingredients (plus a few things from the garden) let’s make the first aid kit and general insect management substances…
Insects In The House, Yard and Garden
Chances are your area has its share of mosquitoes, biting gnats, ticks, chiggers, bees, wasps and yellow jackets during the summer. The best thing to do is avoid them altogether, or at least discourage them from taking up close residence.
Mosquito/Gnat Repellant
For some people simply splashing some rubbing alcohol on exposed skin and allowing it to dry will deter mosquitoes and gnats, who are attracted to white clothing, carbon dioxide exhaled by breathing, and the scent of humans. Anything that disguises or (temporarily) eliminates the scent will help repel.
Avon Skin-So-Soft is a strong-smelling bath oil that works very well to repel biting insects, if you can stand the smell.
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Crushing and rubbing mint, lemon balm or basil leaves on the skin is often an effective mosquito repellant.
A few drops of essential oil (eucalyptus, cedar, tea tree, fir, etc.) in rubbing alcohol will extend the useful repellant time of plain rubbing alcohol. Oil of citronella, peppermint lemon balm, cloves, geraniums, fleabane (pyrethrum) or rosemary also work.
garlic oil – available as supplements in gelatin shells you can prick with a pin will work if you can stand the smell, and eating a lot of garlic (or taking good doses of the oil supplements) will give your sweat a garlic odor that discourages biting insects. So does a strong decoction of mint, and the mint smells better. Mix with rubbing alcohol, put it in a spray bottle and use liberally.
Wood smoke dispels biting insects too, I’ve found that keeping the campfire going during gatherings and not sweating the smoke very much tends to keep the main portion of the back yard clear of mosquitoes and gnats.
First Aid for Insect Encounters
Wasps, yellow jackets and bees can produce big, painful welts and can cause serious allergic reactions. Bees will often leave a stinger in the skin – DO NOT squeeze or try to pull it out. Scrape it out with the edge of a fingernail or credit card so more venom isn’t introduced. The best immediate treatment I’ve found is a paste of baking soda and cold water. Apply thickly to the sting site and let it dry, then brush the residue off and apply again. As the soda dries, it will tend to pull the venom from the wound.
A good paste for this purpose is also baking soda and rubbing alcohol, so keep these ingredients close together. The alcohol will not only disinfect the site, it dries faster than water and increases the leaching action of the soda.
For pain, applying lemon juice or vinegar to the sting often helps. Ammonia works too, and can definitely help dispel the itch of mosquito bites. A wet tea bag (black tea) applied to bites will help keep swelling down.
If a guest is unlucky enough to encounter a swarm and sustain more than one or two stings (yellow jackets are bad for swarming, as are hornets and sometimes bees), keep some Benedryl cream and pills handy. If anyone coming to visit has a deadly allergy to bees, you might ought to encourage them to go to the beach instead.
A slice of cucumber applied directly to bites helps to ease itching. A cucumber mush (run peeled cukes through the food processor) with some chunks of aloe is very soothing to apply to chigger bites. Add some salt for rashes. You’ll also want to treat chiggers with alcohol, they’re some of the worst bites when it comes to infection setting in.
First Aid for Poison Ivy/Poison Oak
…and other plant irritations. The cucumber and aloe goop mentioned above is soothing to poison ivy rashes, helps to ease itching. But the best thing to do if someone has been somewhere on the property where they’re just bound to encounter ivy, is to put them into a bathtub with about 4-6 inches of tepid water into which you’ve mixed half a cup of baking soda or a quarter cup of chlorine bleach. Have them wash thoroughly all exposed skin with soap and rinse well.
Alternatives to the above are baths with white vinegar or epsom salt.
A paste of baking soda and vinegar is often better than Calamine for easing the itch. It will foam, but if you mix slowly you’ll eventually get a paste thin enough to spread. When it’s good and dry, rinse off again in tepid, salted bathwater, then apply aloe in rubbing alcohol.
Other Issues
A tepid baking soda bath also soothes heat rashes and diaper rash, sunburn and windburn, and other skin rashes.
Baking soda paste is an excellent whitening toothpaste, and baking soda in water is a healthful mouth rinse. Half a teaspoon of soda in half a glass of water eases heartburn and acid indigestion as well as upset stomach from gas.
A strong, hot water salt solution is a great gargle for sore throats. My father swore by hot salt water, we never kept sore throat medicines in our house – salt water was it, and it worked.
I advise everyone to keep a healthy aloe plant in a big pot somewhere in the house or on the porch to treat sumburns, minor burn-burns, skin scrapes and lesions, dry skin, etc., etc. Mints aren’t hard to grow either, and like Rosemary are perennial wherever you put them. If the mints escape into the yard (as they’re entirely likely to do), just mow them when you mow the grass. Makes your fresh-mowed lawn smell absolutely heavenly, and you’ve plenty of mint for making teas, stomach-soothers, bug repellant, etc.
If readers have more money-saving recipes and hints, please post them in the comments! One could spend literally hundreds of dollars on these sort of products just for the summer season, or save a lot of money by doing it themselves!
Posts to This Series:
Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid