I was so excited to finish up our dish soap supply so that we could start using a more natural (and cheaper) homemade version. Some DIY versions I'd seen include Borax. While I have no problem using the stuff in the dishwasher or washing machine, we use our dish soap not only to hand-wash dishes, but also for our hand soap, so I wanted to keep the mixture as pure as possible.
Luckily, I found that I could get effective results with just two ingredients: soap and water.
Yup, you read that correctly. The amazing no-fail way to get things clean is by sticking to the basics.
Of course, if you want your soap smelling all fancy, you could easily add in a few drops of your favorite essential oil, but we prefer things plain around these parts.
So here are your super-simple directions for making up a batch of dish and hand soap for yourself:
What You Need:
1 bar of castile soap (this is our favorite)
4 cups of boiling water
What You Do:
1. I find it works best to use my food processor for this (get one here).
I run the soap through once with my grating blade, then again with my regular blade to process it all even finer. This helps it all dissolve better in the water.2. Dump your soap shavings in a pot of boiling water and stir until it's all dissolved. This is where the double-processing comes in handy, as it cuts down on the time spent on this step.
3. Pour the mixture into your storage container (I like to upcycle a big glass jar, from something like pickles). When it has cooled, then you can fill up all your hand soap dispensers from around the house (you can re-use old commercial soap dispensers forever).
See, I told you it was super-easy! Make a batch up for yourself and let me know how it goes. Comment here or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.
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