Liquid Hand Soap

For more years than I even want to think about, I have been buying the Bath and Body Works foaming hand soap. My favorites were Vanilla for the bathrooms and Lime Verbeena for the kitchen. I have always felt like I was getting a great deal when I could get three, sometimes four and rarely five bottles of their soap for $10.00. I would stock up and buy a couple dozen at a time because I didn't like running out at the wrong time, actually there is never a good time! 

I had a rude awakening recently when I was reading about how to make your own hand soap. I found out that there is only one and a half tablespoons of soap in the foaming containers and the rest is water! Wow, I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I thought about the hundreds of dollars that I have handed over to B&BW for their water with a touch of soap!

I decided right then that I was not going to hand my money over to then again so started searching for how to make the very best hand soap that I could. I found out that there are lots of recipes for making bar soap, but the couple of recipes I found for liquid hand soap were just basic and unexciting. Most of them suggested you grate bars of soap which I will probably try eventually, but that wasn't what I was looking for. This method is definitely fool proof. All you have to do is grate the bar of soap, add water, melt it down and you have your liquid soap.

I started getting a little frustrated that it was so hard to find any information about or recipes that really captured my interest. I finally found a couple that I decided to combine and come up with my own. I'm not going to say that I have all the amounts exactly right at this point, but it works and we have really enjoyed using it. I think part of the difference is that there aren't all the propyl-, butyl-, ethyl-, and isobutyl-'s, so it isn't going to feel the same as those that have all of those chemicals in them. But, our hands are a lot softer after several weeks of using my different concoctions. The thing we're not sure about is the super squeaky clean feeling your hands have after you rinse the soap off. I'm guessing that they have a chemical that keeps that from happening with commercial hand soaps.

I will continue searching for other recipes, but I have a lot of liquid soap right now, and because we are only using it a tablespoon and a half at a time, we won't need anymore for years! I'm going to post what I have come up with so far and will let you know if I come up with something better.

Many thanks to my dear Hubby who rescued my empty B&BW pump soap dispensers from the recycle. I very happily stripped off the B&BW label and now they are ours!

Enjoy!