How to make natural liquid hand soap

One thing I forgot to add to last week's beauty products is liquid hand soap. I wash my hands so many times during the day it's impossible to count, especially when I'm in the kitchen. I'm a virgo and I hate having dirty hands;) Liquid hand soap is now the accepted norm in anyone's bathroom. No-one likes bars of soap, especially if they have to be shared. They leave a huge mess on your basin and they collect germs as well.

Right next to the hand soap you usually find the hand cream. Hand cream is pretty necessary if you are using conventional liquid soap because it dries out your skin so badly. If you, like me, wash your hands about a hundred times a day, you are going to need hand cream to put some of the moisture back. The unfortunate thing about the hand cream is that it usually isn't natural either so it is going to end up drying out your hands more unless you buy a natural one.

 If you have two bathrooms in your house (which a lot of people do) that means a liquid hand soap for both bathrooms, and, if you're like me, one for your kitchen too.

That can be expensive if you buy them monthly. You're probably looking at about R30-R40 a bottle, and they aren't big bottles. Multiply that by 3 and you are spending over R100 a month just on liquid hand soap. Try to go the natural route and you will end up spending even more. I struggled to find an affordable, natural liquid hand soap.

My solution? I make my own:) It's actually so easy and so cheap you'll wonder what you've been wasting all that money on!

All you need is:

1 bar of natural soap (You can find this at all health shops and many farmer's markets as well)
±3 litres of water (the amount of water you use will determine the thickness of your soap. You'll get used to your own preference)
Essential oils (optional)

• Grate the bar of soap completely
• If you are using tap water, place the water in a pot on the stove and boil completely to kill germs and remove chlorine. If you are using filtered water simply make sure the water is heated enough to dissolve the soap in it.
• Place the grated soap into the heated water and mix until it is all dissolved. You will notice your mixture is very liquidy. That's fine.
• Remove from heat and leave to cool on the counter overnight
• When you come back to your mixture you will see that it's taken on a gel-like appearance. This is when you add your essential oils and stir them in. I add some tea tree for anti-bacterial purposes and then whatever else you want your soap to smell like. It might be tricky to stir initially because it'll be very thick but it will thin as you stir. Don't stir too much or it will become TOO liquid again.
• Decant your soap into clean soap dispenser containers (This is why it's good to keep old ones, especially if you want everything to match)

Total cost for the soap is the cost of the bar of soap plus a few drops essential oil. Even if you spent R40 on the soap, that R40 has given you 3 litres worth of hand soap which should last you several months! For an even more moisturising recipe, I sometimes also add 2 tablespoons glycerine and 2 tablespoons coconut oil but it's not necessary at all. 

Be sure to keep the excess soap in the fridge, or somewhere cool, until your bottles need to be topped up again. Because it doesn't contain any preservatives, it will go off eventually. Soap never lasts long enough in our house to worry about that though!

You may find this soap to be a little more gooey than commercial handsoap but it does the job perfectly in my opinion so it's not an issue for me. It's also passed the GLM test and that means it's definitely good enough;)