We’ve always been the kind of family that never thought twice about running out to the store to pick up whatever we needed. Part of our sustainability challenge is to rely more on what we have.
This morning, my husband mentioned that we were nearly out of dish soap, and asked me to pick some up when I was out. I started to add it to my mental shopping list, and then stopped. I looked around the kitchen, and realized that we had everything there to make our own dish soap.
Good. I’d been looking for a new project, and this was perfect. I ushered Hubby and the kids off to Grandma and Grandpa’s and prepared to get my craft on.
Coffee Vanilla Soap Bars
Making your own dish soap is super easy. So easy it’s almost embarrassing to go to the store and purchase it. All you need is a bar of soap (I used one from a batch I made a few weeks ago), water and lemon juice. That’s it.
Step 1: Grate about a cup of Soap
Gratey Gratey
Step 2: Place grated soap into a pot with about two-two and a half cups of warm water.
Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble
Step 3: Keep it over medium-low heat until all the grated soap has melted. Don’t boil it, just keep it warm.
Citron
Step 4: Allow the mixture to cool, and add about a teaspoon of lemon juice. I actually didn’t measure, I just put a good glug in. It seemed to turn out all right.
Allow the mixture to cool completely, and then pour into any container you like. I recycled an old dish soap bottle. Don’t mind the hideous colour, I used coffee vanilla bean soap to start with. Pretty or not, it’ll clean the dishes just the same.
Bar to Bottle
So that’s what I did today. Well, that and make up about a gallon of all purpose bathroom cleaner, tub scrub, and then proceeded to scrub a tub and clean a bathroom. And laundry. What can I say? It’s Sunday. That’s what we do around here on Sundays.
What was your Sustainable Sunday like?
What a fun, great post!
So easy to make! I’m doing this when I run out. I can use any soap, like Dove?
Absolutely. Any soap bar would work. In fact, my local dollar store has some really nice (and cheap) olive oil soap bars that I might try next time. They would probably be really nice on the hands. Well, on my husbands hands, I don’t do dishes
Very useful blog. It was very relavant. I was looking exaxtly for this. Thank you for your effort. I hope you will write more such interesting posts.
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This is FANTASTIC!!!! I am going to do this over the weekend because we are running low on dish soap…(I am thinking this would be also good for making liquid hand soap, too) Thank you so much Lesley. With joy, Angi
I would like to know how you made the original coffee vanilla soap?
I’ll make that my next pictorial.
love, love….going to try this out!
These look good enough to eat!
I would love for you to enter this in my link-up this week of green cleaners.
http://www.randomrecycling.com/2012/03/diy-cleaning-recipes-link-up.html
Thanks!
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Reblogged this on ByzantineFlowers and commented:
Homemade Liquid Dish Soap Recipe… what a resourceful idea! Save those left-over soap bars! I know what I’m doing next time I run out.
You can add a little tea tree oil to it and make it antibacterial.
Genius… I should try this… did you also make the bar of soap?
Yes. I did.
My daughter needs to know what dish soap is.
Your Sundays sound like my Sundays! I’d love to hear more about making your own soap–I’ve been meaning to try it for years.
ps. thanks for the like on my blog! Tatianaryckman.wordpress.com
The pleasure was all mine. I love handmade everythings, and your blog has been very inspirational to me.
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Great idea! I’d definitely use an organic soap such as olive oil based otherwise commercial soaps are a mass of chemicals smeared on your crockery. There’s a what goes on your skin goes directly into your blood post on my blog called Skin Love.
Could you use liquid soap?? I have tons of it on hand!
About how much do you use for each sink half full of water? Mine came out just like water no thickness at all help :/
If it’s too thin, pour it back into a pot and grate in a bit more soap. Only add a little at a time, because it doesn’t take much for it to go from “too thin” to “solid block”. Good luck.
I followed the recipe exactly, and it came out great!…at first. The next day, it was some kind of ultra-polymer, very thick and not squirt-able at all. It barely suds. I did use castile soap…could that be the problem?
It’s possible, I’ve never used the castile soap. Try reheating it so that it’s pour-able and then adding more water to thin it out. Home made soap doesn’t have anywhere near as many suds. Lather doesn’t mean clean though, it’s just what we’re used to with commercial soap. Good luck!
would like a link to your bar of soap recipe ????
A quick Google of “crock pot lye soap” should give you all you need. I can’t remember which recipe I used, and I also followed a few different youtube videos on the process. There’s lots of great info out there. Good Luck!