The Linen Project - how to make linen water and scent disks

One of the great joys of this house is the walk in wardrobe room. I've never had a really organised wardrobe room, and as I'm a packrat with highly fluctuating weight, I end up with far too much stuff to store in the traditional single wardrobe and dresser. This year, I made the resolution to actually get sorted and back down to reasonable quantities of  'stuff '.

We've spent a whole weekend going through everything fabric and we have another large box of materials to take to the charity shop in Hoorn for recycling and reuse. It's also been a wonderful opportunity to catch up the ironing and folding - and sorting out the room into a vaguely logical order. I hate ironing - with a passion! It is the most boring activity and is designed to waste precious time on something that is completely pointless. But it still needs to be done occasionally -  (read once a year) and this weekend was that weekend.

Steam ironing is the quickest way through the pain. I once bought a bottle of linen water from L'Occitane - it gave a wonderful  scent to the linen that lasted for ages. I've been interested in knowing how to replicate it, but with my own chosen scents for a while. Some quick research came up with lots of recipes on how to create your own linen water - essentially a blend of distilled water, essential oils and a clear alcohol (rubbing alcohol, vodka)  to break up the oils and diffuse them  through the water. Mix, shake extremely well, pour into a spray bottle (bought for 99c at the gRden centre) & voila - linen water!

The fresh linen brings a fresh scent to the wardrobe room - and it's something I want to have there, more than once a year. I'm still not keen on ironing - so instead I've made my own scent disks from a pine root which we dug out of the garden when we remodelled last summer. Once it was dried, W sliced it thinly to expose the growth rings. They are then dripped with my chosen essential oil blend & placed in drawers and cupboard corners. They need refreshing occasionally, but its quite and easy to do so. The disks in the picture are still quite rough, with feathers at the edge of the saw travel : you can sand them to make a more uniform shape, if you prefer. I love them rough and natural, but I do need to make sure they don't get too close to any delicate fabrics that they could snag.

It's been a steamy weekend, but I've got lots of lovely linen & Grandma's lace table runner all ready to go!