Are you trying to find ways to cut down on household expenses? Do you like the convenience of hand soap but not the price and waste of individual dispensers? Read on to learn how to make DIY hand soap that costs less than $5 per year!
Soap shouldn’t be an expensive item in your shopping cart. Sure, there are plenty of brands out there which offer exotic scents and pretty bottles to grab your attention (and your dollars).
But if you’re looking for a simple way to economize on household goods and save money, this smart and simple DIY hand soap tutorial is for you!
Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. If you click the links and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read my full disclosure here.
Step 1: Buy your soap
Start with a bottle of foaming hand soap. It can be any brand; just try to find a bottle that seems sturdy, because you will be reusing it. The longer this first bottle lasts, the more you save!
Dollar General offers different brands of foaming hand soap for $1.95-$3.00 for the budget options. There aren’t any dollar stores where I live, so mine was a little more expensive. However, the bottles have been lasting closer to 2 years, so I don’t mind.
Next, find a big bottle of liquid hand soap labeled “refill”. These are larger bottles than the individual dispensers. They are not meant to sit next to your bathroom sink, but rather refill the smaller dispensers several times.
I use the SoftSoap brand, which is $2.95 for a 40 oz. bottle. You may be able to find store brands for slightly cheaper prices. I believe Dollar General brand is $2.50 for 40 oz.
Larger sizes can also be cost effective. You can find bigger jugs of hand soap refills on Amazon or at your local restaurant supply store.
WARNING:
Don’t assume anything will be less expensive just because it comes in bulk sizing. Check the unit price first! For liquid soap, this is the price per ounce. It should be listed on the price tag, in smaller numbers than the actual price.
As a point of reference, the Dollar General brand 40 oz. bottle costs $0.06 per ounce. If you find something cheaper at an online retailer, make sure you remember to add any shipping costs to your calculations.
Step 2: Learn how to refill the dispenser correctly
Here’s where the math comes in. Once you have used up all of the soap in the foaming hand soap dispenser, now you have to start measuring. Don’t worry; it’s easy!
Make sure you rinse out the soap dispenser if your soap refill is a very different scent than what was originally in the dispenser!
The general rule of thumb is to fill the dispenser 5/6 full with warm tap water, and the remaining 1/6 with liquid soap.
However, you’ll notice that the foaming soap dispensers have a larger pumping mechanism that takes up more space in the bottle than non foaming dispensers have.
To account for that extra headspace, I usually fill the bottle just short of 3/4 full with warm tap water.
My foaming soap dispenser is a 10 oz. bottle. Others may be smaller or larger. I fill the bottle with 8 oz. of warm water.
You don’t have to measure, but I would recommend doing it the first time. That way, you can mark your dispenser for future refills.
If pen or permanent marker won’t show up on your bottle, try sticking a small piece of tape on the bottle at the level of the water.
Oh, and please do use warm water. You are trying to dilute the soap evenly throughout the water, and it’s harder to do that with cold water.
Set the pump back in the bottle and mark the bottle just under the bottom edge of the pump. Or you can just eyeball it!
Remove the pump again and fill the bottle with liquid soap up to the line you just made (real or imaginary). For my 10 oz. bottle, this is 2 ounces of soap, or about 1/4 cup.
Now screw the pump back in place. If you filled the bottle a little too full, you may get some suds coming out the top. Ideally, you want a little bit of headspace above the liquid in the container.
Tilt the bottle back and forth gently to combine the soap and water. You don’t want to shake it vigorously, or you’ll just end up with a lot of bubbles and most of the soap sinking to the bottom of the dispenser.
A clear soap dispenser is handy here, because you can see the soap as you put it in the bottle. Then, when tilting it back and forth, you know it’s all combined when you can’t see ripples of soap anymore.
Of course, clear soap is more difficult to see, but it’s still easier than using a dark-colored dispenser.
The first foaming hand soap dispenser I used was tinted deep purple, and there was no way I could see through it to tell if the soap and water were combined well enough!
That’s why I’ve been using clear ones ever since that first bottle broke.
That’s really all there is to it! You will notice that it only takes a couple of tablespoons of hand soap to refill the dispenser. Your big refill bottle of hand soap will last a long time this way!
For us, this DIY hand soap lasts about a year. You may find that it lasts you longer or shorter, depending on your family size.
Notes on DIY hand soap
Why do you add the water first, then the soap?
This is to prevent soap bubbles in the dispenser. If you put the soap in first, and then hold the bottle under the tap, the water pressure will just fill your bottle with bubbles, and won’t leave enough room for the water.
Why is there so little soap in the bottle? Does that even get your hands clean?
Foaming hand soap dispensers are designed to work this way. Instead of wetting your hands, then pumping soap onto them and lathering up, the foaming soap dispensers skip that first step.
They combine water with soap so you just need to pump the soap and lather your hands, then rinse them under the faucet. This actually saves water in the long run, because you won’t run the faucet as long.
It also saves soap. Have you ever caught your kids with a handful of liquid soap? I rest my case.
To answer the last part of the question, I would say that the most important factor in actually cleaning your hands when you wash them is lathering them.
It’s the action of rubbing the soap all over your hands and working up a lather which traps the dirt and bacteria. Then rinsing the soap off rinses the grime off with it.
Both kinds of soap can clean your hands. Foaming soap might make it slightly easier to achieve a good lather- especially if your tap water is really cold in the winter, like ours!
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I’m experimenting with some other soap recipes using natural ingredients. If you’re looking for a foaming hand soap recipe that uses all natural ingredients, check out this post from Katie at Wellness Mama.
If you have any other questions, I would be happy to answer them!
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