The Country Homemaker Hop- #17

Easy Homemade Liquid Hand Soap

I mixed up a few batches of liquid handsoap this week.  It was my BFF Michelle's idea.  She's been on a mission to make every homemade cleaning product we can since our dear blog friend Dolly posted that wonderful post featuring the Queen of Green Cleaning- Leslie Reichert, a while back... Poor Michelle, I have garden prep and seed starting/transplanting on the brain while she's got spring cleaning on the brain.    She's such a trooper though.  I have a gallon here with her name on it.

photo credit- http://endeavorsofahousewife.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/homemade-liquid-handsoap/

I really had a lot of fun and I can hardly believe how easy it was.  I followed the instructions in Amy Walker's blog post HERE, though there are several other great recipes online.  Most of them feature the same basic ingredients.  Amy's recipe calls for 1 bar soap grated, 2 Tbsp. glycerine, 1 gallon of boiling water, and a few drops of essential oil if you like.  

Simply boil the water, remove from heat, and mix in grated bar soap flakes.  Add glycerine and essential oil.  Stir until all soap flakes are melted into the water.  I used a glycerine bar soap and my batches set up a little too thick so I heated them again with an additional 2 cups of water.  They cooled to a wonderful texture.  I now have more than two gallons of wonderful tea rose and Vitamin E liquid handsoap. Hooray!  My cost was about $1 a gallon...

I let my soap cool overnight and bottled the extra into clean recycled gallon milk and orange juice containers.  

That's what I've been up to.

What are YOU working on over at your homestead???