DIY Liquid Hand Soap

First off, this recipe is compliments of Savvy Housekeeping.

I love doing some DIY, crafty, save money endeavors! This one did not disappoint.

Usually when you buy liquid hand soap, you're paying $2 for the cheap stuff and up to $6 for the good stuff. And that's usually the small sizes!

With this do-it-yourself version- you need water (got it!), bar soap (yeah, think I can come up with some of that, too) and glycerin (Okay, not usually on my shelf, but not hard to find at a pharmacy or discount store).

That's it, folks.

How easy is it? Three steps. Three steps easy. Here ya go:

10 cups water (use a liquid measuring cup)

1 cup shaved soap (use a dry measuring cup)

1 T glycerin.

Take your bar of soap- any kind you want (different bars render different results, so you'll have to play around) and your handy-dandy grater and grate your soap. As you can see, I grate my soap and then put it into a mason jar for later use in some other project.

Then, use a large pot and put in 10 cups of water, 1 dry cup of grated soap, and 1 Tablespoon glycerin. The mixture doesn't necessarily have to boil. You just want to heat it long enough that all the soap melts.

Then I turned off the stove and walked away.

Yup. That's it. I went out and ran some errands and had lunch and enjoyed my day.

When I got home, I checked the pot. The soap was now cold, and gelling (gel-ing? is that a word?).

I went ahead and added some essential oil at this point. About 10 drops of my favorite scent and stirred it through. Once mixed thoroughly, put into your existing, empty, liquid soap bottles. You will have some left over, depending on how many empty soap bottles you have. I just store my excess liquid soap in a 2-liter soda bottle under the sink. It's ready whenever I need to refill.

This goes a long way! You can get probably 5 or 6 bottles of soap out of this, depending on the size of your soap bottle.

Trust me when I say that you might need to play around a bit. Different soaps react differently. For example, if the soap you buy is a moisturizing soap, it may not gel properly, or if it does, it may not make bubbles when you wash your hands. If you do not use enough glycerin (the magic ingredient) it may not gel at all.

Some bar soaps are really lathery...that is, the type of oils used in making the bar soap is directly related to how much it lathers when used.

Other factors affecting the lather or bubble-ness of soap could be salt or sugar amounts in your brand. A third factor affecting the amount of bubbles soap produces is the water itself- hard water (water that contains lots of minerals) will not lather as much, no matter the brand of soap used. Whereas soft water will bubble a lot.

Again, play around with your circumstances. Maybe add a 1/2 t salt or find soft water if you are experiencing a non-lathering soap.

But, no matter what, the soap will clean without the bubbles. :)