Episode 255: Oil Life While Traveling

With summer weather comes an increase in traveling and spending time away from home. So, today, we're going to explore how you can still incorporate all of your favorite doTERRA products even on the road.

Welcome back to Essential Oil Solutions with doTERRA, the podcast where you'll hear exciting, useful and simple everyday uses for essential oils from experts in the field.

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Today we're excited to talk to Kelly Wimp all about living your oil life while traveling.

doTERRA: Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kelly Wimp: Oh, you're so welcome. Thanks for having me.

doTERRA: Of course, I am so excited to talk to you and learn a little bit more about your experiences.

So, to start, can you give us a little bit of background on the nomadic life that you and your family live?

Kelly: Absolutely. I've always really loved traveling. It's something that lights me on fire. It makes me feel so connected to the world around me. And when I married my husband, we did a lot of traveling and camping together. It was kind of, you know, our special thing that we would always do.

And then back in 2016, we actually took a six week-long backpacking trip through Europe. And we came home and we were sitting in our house—I remember it so vividly—and we just thought, "Why are we doing this? Why do we have this big, huge house that we're not using?" We had made the decision to be child free and we thought, "What if we just traveled full time?"

So, that was in August of 2016, and by November we had purchased an RV, sold our home, bought a truck, and were on the road. So, it all happened very fast, but it's been pretty great.

doTERRA: That is amazing. So, it sounds like you've been doing it for a while now.

Kelly: Yes. We're headed into, I think, the seventh year of being on the road full-time.

doTERRA: Wow. And what essential oils and other doTERRA products have really been the most helpful to have with you as you are traveling full-time?

Kelly: This is such a good question and I feel like it's also really hard to answer because there are so many of them.

But right off the top of my head, the doTERRA On Guard^® Cleaner Concentrate is probably a thing that I will never be able to do my life without, on the road. That's definitely our most used product. I use it for everything from just cleaning, like you would normally clean your actual sticks and bricks home. We also apply it outside the RV to help it with cleaning wheels and the RV, itself, we use it as a spot cleaner on anything and everything. It's been really handy.

We use a lot of Lemon: one, because it's a small space, so anytime we cook anything that might smell a little funky, it doesn't have as much airflow as your regular house to dissipate some of those smells. So, I always have Lemon going in the diffuser just to help purify the air a little bit and make it smell really nice. It's a natural degreaser, too. As you can imagine, we run into a lot of that being on the road full-time. My husband also works in construction, he's a traveling electrician, so we use Lemon quite often in just helping to put in his dirty work boots to help with the odor or help him clean grease off his hands, things like that.

We use quite a bit of DigestZen^®. That was the blend that got me started with doTERRA forever ago and is one that we always have on hand, whether it's windy roads or just, you know, you eat something that's a little funky, we like having that on hand too. And probably doTERRA Balance^®. I think that's another really powerful blend that we use for traveling because as you can imagine, there's just different stressors, not necessarily more than there are in a regular Sixth & Brooks life, but different things that can kind of bring on some feelings of anxiousness or just unease. So, we always have doTERRA Balance^® on hand, too.

doTERRA: Absolutely. I love all of those. And I think a big question that people have about bringing their products with them is how do you store and bring these oils and products you need with you while you're on the road?

Kelly: That's a really good question, too. So, we've actually over the last couple of years--it was sort of our Covid lockdown project—we started renovating our RV. It's a fifth wheel. And part of that was making sure that I had places to store all of my goodies, all of my doTERRA oils and products.

So, one of the drawers in our kitchen we dedicated to the oil drawer. And I actually went to the Container Store and bought a little plastic organizer that I think is designed for jewelry. It's not got a lid or anything on it, it's just tiny little cubes, essentially, if you will. And I can fit three bottles in each cube. So, we have an entire drawer that's full of our oils. And that way they don't roll around when we're on the road—they have a place where they stay. And we know exactly where to put them back because as you can imagine, a small space gets pretty cluttered pretty quickly.

doTERRA: Right.

Kelly: And then I have another couple of carrying cases. I love the hardshell cases that you can find on some places online for your roller bottles and things like that.

So, I try to just make sure that everything is in a place so it's not rolling around and getting broken and things like that as we travel.

doTERRA: Absolutely. I know you mentioned a few already, but what are some of your other favorite ways to just use doTERRA products while traveling, specifically?

Kelly: So, the first thing that popped into my head was the Roam^® Diffuser. I don't think this diffuser gets enough love, especially for people who maybe don't have electricity all the time, which is a big thing that we run into being on the road.

So, if we're staying at an RV park or a campground, we usually have electricity and I can run my diffusers just fine. But as you can imagine, we spend a lot of time outside. We're outside more than not, I would say. And so I love the Room Diffuser because I have it stationary in the house when we're plugged in to power.

And then I can easily just take it off its little docking station and bring it outside on a picnic table and diffuse TerraShield^® if it's a little buggy outside. Or just Peppermint if it's feeling kind of hot and stagnant, we want to sort of liven up our space a little bit.

I've actually even brought it in the car with us when we're traveling. It's bulky, and so I don't recommend it necessarily all the time, but it can be done. So, I love the Room Diffuser. It's really, really great, especially if you move around quite a bit. So, that's a big one.

Another favorite way we use our products is definitely with TerraShield. So, I mentioned we put that in the Roam Diffuser. But I also ended up putting the oil blend in a bigger mister bottle with some Witch Hazel. I added about 10 drops there, so we have a bunch of spray on TerraShield available to us at any time. Currently we're in Michigan in the summer, and if you've ever been in the Midwest in the summertime, you know that the critters like to be out and about. So, we cover ourselves from head to toe in TerraShield when we leave the house and go on hikes and things like that.

I also use DigestZen quite a bit on our dog. We have a black lab, that's our baby, and he goes on all the hikes and everything with us and sometimes he can eat something that maybe doesn't agree with him or he has a little bit of a tummy upset. So, I dilute some of that and put it on his belly. That's a big a big one for us too.

doTERRA: I love all of those. And I, sadly to say, I've never thought about taking that Roam Diffuser outside, especially with TerraShield in the summer. That sounds like such a great solution.

Kelly: Yes, definitely try that. I've actually even taken it outside when it's not buggy out just to have an ambiance for date night or something or for playing games outside. It's so nice to kind of create that sort of calming atmosphere, even when you're outdoors.

doTERRA: Yes, that's definitely on my list of things to try now.

Kelly: Yay!

doTERRA: Before we end, do you have any final just practical tips that you would share for someone listening who's interested in trying to travel more with their family, with their spouse?

Kelly: Oh, gosh, yes. I would say, first of all, if you're considering it and you want to travel more, do it because the time is going to tick by anyway. So, might as well tick by doing something that you feel pulled to do. Less is more.

I think a lot of people, when they start traveling, especially people who transition to a full-time travel lifestyle, it's a tricky transition from going to a house into something more mobile or even if you just want to spend weekends outdoors so we can tend to pack way more than we need. And living this sort of nomadic, smaller lifestyle the last seven years has really taught me the power of minimalism and learning that there's only actually very few material things that you need day-to-day.

Of course, I say that, and I'm definitely a maximalist when it comes to my essential oils, but everything else, yes, less is more. And I think that applies to also the amount of time that you spend traveling.

Sometimes we'll meet people who are taking maybe a two-week RV trip during the summer with their family and they'll try to cram so much stuff in because they want to maximize their time. And really what ends up happening is you feel sort of stressed out and chaotic the whole time. You don't really get to enjoy yourself.

So, slow down. Less is more, bring less stuff, plan less things just to really enjoy it. So, that's a big one.

I also would say assume that nothing is going to go according to plan. I think as humans we love to feel like we're in control and we like to make all these plans and that's part of the fun part for me anyway, when it comes to traveling is planning things out. But I also like to keep in mind the assumption that something is going to go awry at one point in time or another. And if you walk into it expecting that you're less likely to be thrown off course when something does go a little wonky or your plans don't go according to plan. And it just ends up being a much more pleasurable experience when you're not stressed out about things not going the way that you want them to.

doTERRA: Absolutely, I think those are wonderful things to keep in mind, especially during the summer while a lot of people are going out and traveling.

Kelly, thank you so much for sitting down with us today, teaching us a little bit more about how we can use our oils while traveling and how to make it a little bit easier.

Kelly: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me and letting me share.

doTERRA: Thanks for joining us and congratulations on living a healthier lifestyle with essential oils.

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