Easy Homemade Dish Soap

Making your own dish soap is an easy way to save precious pennies in your monthly home budget. It's easy, fun and economical...plus by making your own, you are sure that your family isn't exposed to dangerous chemicals contained in store-bought soaps and cleaners.

I personally use my own recipe, which not only cleans dishes....but is good to use as an antibacterial hand soap as well.

Begin by grating a bar of regular soap. I usually use Dove soap or Yardley's soap, but I only had Oil of Olay this week.....and I also added a bit of Zest soap. Try not to use soap with added color, such as the Zest pictured above if you don't want your soap to have any dyes or color. The Oil of Olay soap I used has added moisturizer, which will make this batch a great soap to use as a hand soap as well as dish soap.

Place your grated soap shavings into a pot with 8 cups of hot water. Do not boil the soap, but make sure all of the flakes are melted.

Once the soap is melted, pour it into a bucket or a bin with another gallon and a half of hot water. Stir to make sure it is mixed well. At this point, I always add a few drops of lavender and tea tree essential oils. I use lavender and tea tree because they are both known for their antibacterial properties....and they smell great! I also add a very small capful of bleach. I've found that this helps add to the antibacterial properties of the soap, but is an optional ingredient.

After stirring the mixture well, funnel it into plastic jugs....or whatever type of storage container you'd like to use. The mix can be added to decorative containers as needed.

It's easy to make homemade dish soap. My recipe makes about 3 gallons of dish soap, and I only have to make batches of it every few months. I've found that making our family's dish soap and laundry detergent saves us at least twenty dollars a month.....and I also know that by making our own cleaning products, we are limiting our childrens' exposure to toxic chemicals often contained in store-bought products.