Olive oil being poured into a bowl

9 Things to Do with Olive Oil Besides Eating It

Olive oil has stood the test of time as a welcome addition and basic component to the kitchen pantry. We love it for salad dressings. We love it to dab it up with a hunk of bread. We love it on pasta. We love extra-virgin and cold-pressed because it’s good for our hearts, and we love to be healthy. It’s hard to imagine a kitchen without it.

April 21, 2017 | Source: One Green Planet | by Jonathon Engels

Olive oil has stood the test of time as a welcome addition and basic component to the kitchen pantry. We love it for salad dressings. We love it to dab it up with a hunk of bread. We love it on pasta. We love extra-virgin and cold-pressed because it’s good for our hearts, and we love to be healthy. It’s hard to imagine a kitchen without it.

While all of that is well and good, olive oil gets even better as we take it out of the kitchen. Olive oil, like other natural ingredients, such as apple cider vinegar and baking soda, is wonderfully useful for taking on household chores, beautifying, and self-medicating. Whatever one’s reasons may be, moving away from chemical products or saving a little cash with DIY recipes, adding olive oil to the mix can quite often come in handy.

1. It Protects Wood

Start looking into the products we use to moisturize and protect our wood surfaces and it quickly becomes apparent that they’d ideally be a little safer. Those readily identifiable odors are often the result of carcinogenic chemicals. Instead, we can make up a simple mixture of olive oil and a few drops of essential oil of lemon or even just lemon juice. It’ll provide the pleasant aroma, as well as keep the wood (and us) healthy.

2. It Moisturizes Skin

It’s easy to drop a bomb on natural skin moisturizer or to damage skin with chemicals from cheaper versions, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve likely got a great skin moisturizer right next to the stovetop. Olive oil has lots of vitamin E, which helps with dry skin both by including it in one’s diet and applying it topically. Use it on cracked heels as well!

3. It Treats Chapped Lips

Chapped lips are a pain in the…mouth, but there are many all-natural home remedies for this common problem. Coconut and flaxseed oil are usually the recommended choices for treating chapped lips, but for those of us who are a bit more run-of-the-mill in the kitchen cabinets, olive oil is also great for getting those lips back to kissable.