On Earth Day, I shared a very popular guest post from Lara Murray with 13 Ways to Waste Less. Her tips included reusing containers, such as hand soap containers, which gave me a birthday gift idea for my little DIYer: supplies to make homemade foaming hand soap!
We used a great Homemade Organic Foaming Hand Soap recipe from Wellness Mama; you can visit her for detailed ingredients and instructions (ethical bloggers don’t just copy others’ content) – but here are photos of our experience with some tweaks and recommendations!
BOTTLES: I purchased from Amazon (yes, I realize it would have been even more eco-friendly to reuse a bottle I already had, but that didn’t seem like as much of a gift for Eva as a set of new bottles).
SOAP: Pure Castile Soap (also from Amazon) – for best savings buy the largest size possible. Well Mama’s recipe also includes the option of adding essential oils, but I chose to purchase a scented soap and skip that step.
Eva had a lot of fun putting together her own homemade soap!
Moving forward, we’ll add more than suggested to make the mixture a bit soapier – though it does foam very well with the listed amount.
Note that Wellness Mama also suggests adding a liquid oil to help preserve the life of the dispenser, which we did, but as you might predict the oil tends to settle back on top in a yellowish layer so if you’re using clear containers and you’re picky about presentation you may want to risk skipping that step! (We’ll leave it out the next time.)
For the final touch, Eva pulled out some pretty name labels she received years ago from Stuck On You – bare bottles just seemed a little too plain, but DIY label design was definitely not in the schedule!
Financial considerations:
Investing in a pack of 6 bottles from Amazon ended up being about $4.14 per bottle (including taxes and shipping), so keep your eyes open for cheaper versions, or better yet hold on to purchased bottles of soap when they’re empty. I will definitely want to make sure I use these enough times to make it worth the cost.
As for the contents, according to my calculations it worked out to $1.98 per bottle – not rock-bottom but cheaper than retail, and at least you know the exact (simple and organic) ingredients your family is using to wash their hands! If I buy even larger bottles of Castile soap next time and make sure to qualify for free shipping it will cost even less to make our refills.
Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions! Thanks for the recipe, Wellness Mama!