You guys know by now that I am obsessed with cleaning up my household and personal care products. I have a a super easy 2 Ingredient Non-Toxic Wood Polish recipe to share with you today.
I mentioned earlier this summer that I was completely remodeling my kitchen. (Finally!) I love the look of natural wood, and decided to replace my old kitchen island counter top with a beautiful piece of butcher block. So naturally I had to create a recipe for keeping it looking amazing.
Luckily for me my Little One goes to a little Waldorf preschool where almost everything is made from wood – the furniture, the toys, and even the plates and bowls that they eat out of. So sweet! And it just so happens that just as I was having my amazingly beautiful wooden counter top put in, it was time for the beginning of the year work day at school. And one of the jobs I was assigned to do was to polish all of the wooden chairs and cutting boards.
What our teacher uses is a simple blend of olive oil and beeswax. And it works beautifully. Brilliant! I went right home to give it a try.
What I love the most about this recipe is that it is super quick and easy to make. And it really works! You can use it to seal and stain wood. It will also help protect the look and color of previously stained wood. It will help prevent staining, drying, and cracking of wood as well.
And both ingredients are completely safe and non-toxic. So you don’t have to worry about using it around your little ones and pets. You can literally eat it if you wanted to. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it does double as a wonderfully healing salve for rough, dry hands and feet. (I may have rubbed some on my dry heels while I was making it.) And it naturally smells amazing because of the beeswax.
Things to use the wood polish on:
- wooden tables and chairs
- butcher block counter tops
- cutting boards
- wooden bowl/utensils
- wooden ladles/wooden cooking spoons
- wooden toys/blocks
2 Ingredient Non-toxic Wood Polish
- Yield: about 1 cup 1x
Ingredients
Instructions
- Fill pot with about 2 inches of water and bring water to just below a boil. DO NOT BOIL!!
- Once the water is steaming, place beeswax into glass bowl or pyrex measuring cup. Place into steaming water like a double boiler. Allow the beeswax to melt completely – Mine took about 10 minutes.
- Once the wax is melted with no lumps, add the olive oil. Stir and stir until it is completely smooth and incorporated. Depending on the temperature of your olive oil, you may need to let the beeswax remelt a titch.
- Turn off heat and carefully, without allowing any water to get into the wax mixture, remove bowl from pot and pour melted mixture into a dry glass jar. Allow to cool and harden for several hours.
Notes
Please be aware that beeswax is flammable. It is very important to not let it get too hot. Just be sure to keep the water in the pot below boiling.
This wood polish is good for about a year. Keep it stored in a cool dry place with the lid on. For general wood polishing, simply use it with a clean cloth at room temperature. For sealing and staining previously untreated wood, you may want to heat the mixture up slightly (in a hot water bath or in the sunshine) to get it to be a bit more liquidy.
STEP BY STEP
What you will need:
Melt the beeswax:
Add the olive oil:
Stir, Stir, Stir:
Pour into small glass jar:
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Oh that’s great, thank you! I’ll be trying this soon.
Hi, Katja! What about the olive oil getting rancid as it sits on your blocks/boards?
Hi, Rachel! I have never had the oil go rancid. I use my wooden cutting boards all of the time. I re-polish them every few months. The wood polish does wear off with normal use. I use this on my wooden utensils and have never noticed a rancid smell. 🙂
Love this! Do you think I’d be safe in adding essential oils to the mixture?
If I add some food colouring will this polish then also be a staining polish?
I have not tried that so I cannot say. Please report back if you try it. 🙂
Has anyone tried this on hardwood floors? Does the olive oil completely eliminate the “stickiness” of beeswax?
I think wax on hardwood floor would be too slippery! I used it to polish carbines & the result was wonderful. I don’t use boiler to melt the wax but microwaved then mixed together with oliver oil & 1 teaspoon of lemon essential oil!
I used a glass pyrex bowl for batch and a mason jar for another. The mason jar was easier since I melted, mixed, and store it all in the same container. It also seemed to melt and mix faster.
I think this is a wonderful recipe. I am really interested in trying it. I’ll keep you posted when I’ve done it.
Hi there I’ve made this recipe and it was great as a top coat on my painted furniture, but I’d like to make a salve for conditioning the bare wood inside the drawers. I’ve seen some made with bees wax and hemp oil, plus some scented oil. Would this recipe work using same ratio of hemp oil instead of olive oil?
I haven’t tried it with hemp oil, but would love to hear if you try it. 🙂