Homemade Liquid Handsoap

Hi, this is Caitlin here.  My brothers and sisters and I go through so much hand soap.  You know, the kind in the pump?  Well it's expensive to buy it and we buy it so often.  Anyway, my mom wanted to find a way to make it herself.  So she did some research on the computer.  She found a recipe and wanted to try it out!  So she invited a friend from church over with her two cute little girls for Graycie and Ellie to play with, and we all made the soap together!  

The list of ingredients is:
8oz bar of soap
2 tbspns liquid glycerine (you can find this in the bandaid section at any store)
1 gallon of water

The first thing I did was grate the bar of soap.

Then we put the grated soap, glycerin and water in a pot on medium-high heat and stirred it until the soap melted.  Once it melted we added some tea tree essential oil that mom already had.  You don't have to do this, but it added a wonderful smell, and tea tree has antibacterial qualities so we thought it would be good to have in the soap.  Then we took the pot off the stove and let it sit overnight.  This morning, it was a big pot of liquid soap!  It was exciting!  

This is a half gallon glass jar that we stored it in.  Remember, we did this with mom's friend so half of the soap went with her.  And we already filled the pumps in the house so that is why the jar is not full.

Here is the difference in cost.  Mom helped me with this, but I'm glad I know how to do division and multipication :)

Just to compare...The 16 oz pump of hand soap we have in our bathroom costed mom $8.00 at the store. Yes, you can get it for cheaper, but mom likes to get the good, natural stuff and for whatever reason, that costs more.  We just made 128oz (1 gallon) of hand soap for $2.43!!!!! That's 7 times as much soap for a fraction of the price!

Here is our cost breakdown:
8oz bar soap = $1.46
1 oz (2tbspns) liquid glycerin = $.97
water = free

It comes out to 2 cents per ounce! Wow...I'm pretty sure we will no longer be buying soap from the store :)  This was such a fun, easy project.  I would encourage all of you to do it!  We also made powdered laundry detergent yesterday.  My brother Nate will be writing about that since he is the one that helped mom the most with that project.  Now if we could just learn to grow and roast our own coffee beans, that would save dad a ton of money since mom drinks so many lattes!!

This is Graycie's friend, Rilynn who came to play with the bunnies while her mom, Mrs. Sene, and mom made the soap.  Aren't they cute??