$.16 for Foaming Hand Soap!!!!!

 

I wanted to try out making my own foaming hand soap to see if I would save money.  I also wanted to replace using plastic in favor of easily recyclable glass.  And eventually, I decided to make it in a scent that I love.

Here is the recipe in case you don't want to read my jibber jabber.

FOAMING SOAP RECIPE

3 parts water

1 part of your favorite liquid soap or body wash (NOT foaming soap)

Directions:  Fill measuring cup to line with water, then add soap (putting soap first then water will make it foam), stir until mixed, pour in foam dispenser.

MATH SKILLS... if you're confused about 3 parts to 1 part, also called a 3:1 (three to one) ratio, here is an explanation.  Take the total of how many ounces or mL you want to make and divide by four.  That number is your 1 part.  Take that number and multiply by three, and you get the three parts.  It's like taking a pizza divided into four slices, three getting pepperoni (3 parts) and one getting sausage (1 part).  Another way to do it is 75% water and 25% soap.

I have long thought that liquid soap was a lot more concentrated than it needed to be which meant you would dispense more soap than was needed for the job and need a lot of running water to break it down.  This was proven to me time and again when I added water to a bottle of liquid soap that was low because I was too lazy to get the refill and it still made suds and worked.  But very liquid-y soap doesn't really cling to your hand very well.  But someone else knew this and invented a way to make even more watery soap foam and eventually that tech was introduced to the masses.

Foaming soaps, when you buy them in their original, foaming, plastic dispenser are around $2ish for 10ish oz.  I always thought they were more expensive and frankly, since they are mostly water I am confused as to why.  Refills on foaming Dial is about $1.30 for 10 oz compared to liquid Dial at $.80 for 10 oz.  You can take 2 oz of that liquid Dial and water it down making your own foaming soap mixture a whopping $.16 for 10 oz.

Making your own foaming soap from liquid is more cost-effective with this Dial Liquid Hand Soap.

Don't press too hard!

You need foaming dispensers in order to get your watery soap to foam, so I bought the glass dispensers you see in the photo at the top on Amazon CLICK HERE (NOT an affiliate link ).  They take 14 oz. of liquid and work really well, the only drawback is that if you get too aggressive with dispensing your soap it will shoot across your hand.  It takes about one pump to wash your hands, and if I am soaking a pan using Dawn (see below), I will use about three to four pumps.

The first soap I tried was Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap, because it was recommended on a blog for making your own foaming soap.  I didn't end up liking the scent, which was lemon, at all.  The is some sort of sediment that settles after a few days, and if you shake it up, it makes it cloudy with floating bits, which is really unappealing to me.  Not to mention that it tells you on the Dr. Bronner's bottle to use up all the soap in a month, and so far we are not on track to be able to do that.  At the price I captured below, it will cost about $1.90 for a refill.

Refills with Dr. Bronner's will cost you around $1.90 at this price.

I ended up making some foaming soap from Dawn Ultra Dishwashing Liquid so I could have it at my kitchen sink.  If I bought the refills of Dawn Ultra Platinum Dishwashing Foam, a 10 oz refill would cost me about $1.88 at $5.64 for a 30 oz. refill bottle.  Using the liquid soap and making my own foaming refill, it would only cost me about $.29 for a 10 oz refill, a $1.50 savings every time I refilled.

Using the Dawn Ultra Liquid I made my own refill and saved $1.50 over buying Dawn's foaming refill.

So then, I am walking around the Augusta Mall and the amazing scents from Bath and Body Works suck me into the store.  Some time ago they offered this orange and ginger scent in a shampoo and I used it at a hotel.  It is my absolute favorite scent, e-ver.  They no longer have the shampoo, which is ok, but you can make your own foaming hand soap from their Body Wash + Foam Bath liquid soap.  I dumped out the Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap mix in one of my dispensers and replaced it with this.  Now I'm in heaven every time I wash my hands!  I am definitely not saving any money using it, as it is around $3.30 for a 10 oz. refill so I'm going to have to either put it in the guest bathroom and amaze people or hide it in my master bath so I don't have to share.  I'm not sure yet.