Homemade Dish Soap

Today I made my first ever batch of dish soap.  I made the liquid kind for hand washing because we don’t use the dishwasher for anything other than a really great dish rack.  Thats right, I have 6 kids and a husband and I hand wash the dishes.  Its really not so bad.  We used to use the dishwasher but the water, gas, and electric bills went up so we stopped.  You wouldn’t think that using a dishwasher would make that much difference, but our water bill has gone down by $10 a month since we stopped using it!  Its hard to say how much it really affected the gas and electric bills, but I’m sure it helped at least a little bit.

When I wash the dishes I fill one side of the sink with soapy water and let the dishes soak for a little bit.  Then I scrub them in that water and place them on the other side of the sink.  Once that part is done, I run a weak stream of water and rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher to dry.  I don’t like having the other side full of clean water like other websites suggest because I feel like the last dishes are just getting rinsed off in dirty water.

I got up this morning and went off to Walmart to buy my supplies.  I purchased all 2 ingredients for a total of $4.95 and they will make me a total of 4 batches which will probably last the better part of the year.  I bought Zote bar soap for 97 cents which actually equalled 3 bars of soap.  I used the equivalent of 1/2 bar of soap.  I bought the Fleet brand glycerin in the laxitive section for $3.98 and it was already divided into four 1 1/2 tsp dropper thingys.  I figure it cost me about $1.15 to make the batch which will likely last me 3 months or so.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of either soap flakes or grated bar soap (I used bar soap)

3 cups water

1 1/2 tsp liquid glycerin 

Directions:

In a large saucepan combine your soap, glycerin, and water.  

Cook over medium low heat until the soap is melted and the mixture is smooth.  It will be very thin, do NOT add more soap, it will thicken up on its own.

They say to let it cool overnight but I just put mine in the fridge until it was cool to the touch.  Then I used an old hand beater to blend the mixture until it was smooth.  Once that was done, I used a ladle to transfer it to a measuring cup and then poured it into the containers I had ready.  I didn’t have a funnel on hand and using the measuring cup was fine, there was no spillage at all.

I was able to fill 1 dish soap container and then had enough to fill 1 1/2 old spaghetti sauce jars.

If the soap comes out too thick for your liking you can just add more water.  This soap also works well as a liquid hand soap and is safe for children or animals and is fine for septic tanks.  This is a gel soap and it will not suds up like most store bought dish soaps, but suds do NOT always equal clean :)

I have already used it to wash a sink full of dishes and I have no complaints so far.  I have yet to find out how it handles grease.  I’ll update when I do.


*update as of 1/16/2012: This soap is great for non greasy dishes but it definitely lacks when it comes to the greasy ones.  I found that sprinkling baking soda on the greasy dishes then scrubbing works great!  And still cheap :)