Hand Soap/Body Wash DIY

Recipe and tutorial source: http://www.thefarmersnest.com/2011/11/liquid-hand-soap-diy.html

Ingredients: 1 gallon distilled water, 1 8-oz bar soap (NOT Dove or any "moisturizing"), 2T liquid glycerin (band-aid section at Walmart)

Nutshell version: Grate bar of soap. Add everything else. Melt in pot. Let sit 12 hours. Beat if necessary.

Cost: Liquid glycerin costs about $4.00 for enough to make around 10 recipes, so $0.40/recipe. Distilled water costs about $0.80/recipe, and the other variable is your soap. I spent about $3.80 on a bar of goat milk soap that smelled glorious and not too girly so that my husband can enjoy the body wash and hand soap as well. This brings my total per recipe to $5.00.

*I do have to note that I bought less than 8 oz of soap, so it made a little over 1/2 a gallon, whereas getting a bigger bar or two bars would have cost a little more and yielded more. If you get a cheap bar of soap you like, you can make this cheaper.  I wanted a luxurious soap, so I paid a little more.

This whole project is perfect for a rainy day and smells tremendous! I used Goat Milk Red Jasmine Rice soap, which is a rich red-orange color and has a slightly sweet, clean smell. I bought it at World Market and used my birthday coupon to bring down the price a little. The hardest part for me was grating the whole bar of soap on a grater not entirely made for that kind of punishment. I dumped everything in a pot on the stove, making approximate adjustments for the fact that I was using under 6 oz. of soap instead of 8. I heated it up until it was all melted, really only a couple of minutes, then took it off the heat and the waiting began.

In a couple of hours, it started to cloud. When we went to bed, I brought the whole pot in the bedroom and set it on my printer so that I could wake up to a wonderful-smelling room. Though it did smell great, the consistency when I woke up this morning was downright odd. The soapy part had separated from the watery part and settled on the bottom to cool, making for a pretty goo. I heated it up for about 30 seconds on the stove, then blended it with an electric mixer on low for about 30 seconds. That did the trick, and I had a pour-able liquid soap that smelled great and made my hands feel nice and soft. It's not very thick, but each soap works differently, and I would rather have a thinner soap than a thicker one, anyway, so I can squirt it from our existing body wash bottle with ease.

David's mom washed the dishes in the pot I had used, and the remaining soap on the beaters and funnel I used to pour the soap into the used milk jug was enough soap to clean the dishes and leave the kitchen and her hands smelling fresh.

Verdict: I would totally make this again, it's just that I doubt we'll be finished with this much soap by the time we're too old to remember how to make it! How amazing is that?