I use the head soothing essential oil because headaches often come along with colds. And I use these shower steamers when I’m feeling a cold coming on.

However, if you don’t have that one, you can use your favorite essential oils or make your own essential oil blend. Personally, I would suggest fragrant essential oils that will get into your nose when you take really deep breaths in the shower. Peppermint oil, eucalyptus oil, and lavender oil are really good suggestions for sinus congestion from this article.

I like lavender because lavender is a really calming fragrance, so lavender witch hazel is just another bit of lavender into the steamers.

If you can’t find it, an unscented witch hazel will work. Just make sure that you don’t choose an alcohol-free witch hazel. You need the alcohol in the witch hazel to help the dry mixture start clumping. If you use water, the steamers won’t solidify as well and will be a crumbly mess.

Make sure that you are using a witch hazel with alcohol in it. That alcohol helps to hold the shower steamers together. Omitting this ingredient or using water in its place will cause the shower steamers to fall apart.

Store homemade shower steamers in an airtight container until you are ready to use them. This will help to keep them dry.

If you store them on a countertop exposed to air and/or direct sunlight, they may absorb the moisture in the air and lose their potency.

​Our shower steamer recipe doesn’t use citric acid. Citric acid will cause a fizzing reaction, which is actually unnecessary because you don’t need fizz to come up from the floor of the shower.

However, if you’re more of a bath person than a shower person, so you wanted to use this recipe to make bath bombs rather than shower steamers, you’d want to add citric acid because the fizzy reaction is part of the appeal of bath bombs.

If you’re making these as a gift, you want to make a few changes.

First, instead of using silicone molds, use colorful cupcake liners. That way, your friend can dispose of the liners rather than having to return the silicone liners to you.

Then, pack the shower steamers in a cute airtight container, like a mason jar or similar jar that looks more like a present. You can even add a piece of cloth between the lid and ring of the jar (like we do in our DIY Mason Jar Cocktail Kits to look more like a present).

Shower steamers don’t have a true expiration date. However, the essential oil fragrance may lessen over time. So it’s better to use these sooner rather than later.