Making Homemade Air Freshener and Reed Diffusers

On a few occasions in the past, I have attempted to make homemade air fresheners and reed diffusers, with varying degrees of success. I have a number of essential oils and thought it would be a good way to try to use them up and save money on buying more chemically based products.

Initially, with regard to reed diffusers, I bought a carrier oil and used it with essential oils, which I read somewhere was the way to make them, but this didn't seem to diffuse the scent and it was expensive using oil, especially these days when the price of any oils has gone up exponentially, so I gave up on the idea and continued to buy them.

I then saw an instagram post by Nancy Birtwistle, which suggested that a good way to make reed diffusers was to add 10 drops of essential oil to a bottle full of water and then to disperse the essential oil, which tends to float on top of the water, she suggested adding 10 drops of this too:

The Polysorbate 80 is used in soap making and emulsifies the essential oil so that it disperses in the water. It does make the water look a bit cloudy, but this isn't noticable in a coloured bottle like I used. I bought this bottle of Polysorbate on eBay for about £7, which sounds a lot, but using 10 drops at a time, it should last for ages, so next time my reed diffuser runs out, I will try this method, hopefully, with better results.

In the meantime, I ran out of air freshener, so I reverted back to my original homemade air freshener, which was just water and essential oil combined. Despite the oil not dissolving in the water, I did find that it continued to give off a scent without any polysorbate added, but when another shop bought bottle that I use upstairs ran out, I decided to put Nancy's idea to the test. 

With the air freshener/clothes freshening spray, Nancy does suggest using alcohol instead of water, but I preferred to stick with just plain water, as alcohol seemed like an expensive option and I didn't need it to freshen clothing. I made the air freshener in a spray bottle this time, with water, lavender essential oil and polysorbate 80. I gave it a good shake and it seems to work okay and is definintely preferable to spending £2-3 each purchase on a bottle full of chemicals, so I'll stick with this from now on and see if I can find any other uses for the polysorbate too.

Have you ever tried to make homemade reed diffusers or air fresheners?