How to Make DIY Liquid Hand Soap

Published March 11, 2020
woman taking on hands liquid soap

It may seem like you're always running out of hand soap, especially when the family is sick. Rather than buy stock in hand soap, you can make homemade hand soap. Learn how to make DIY liquid hand soap using dish soap, bar soap and castile soap. You can even make your own antibacterial hand soap right at home.

DIY Hand Soap Recipes From Scratch

During peak cold and flu seasons, keeping enough hand soap on hand can be tough. It can also be quite expensive. Rather than stockpiling hand soap, you can make your own for half the price and with few materials.

What You Need

Making hand soap is simple. But you are going to need a few ingredients. For these recipes, you'll need:

  • Dish soap
  • Bar soap
  • Dr. Bronner's castile soap (other brands also work well)
  • Grapeseed oil/jojoba oil/almond oil (olive and coconut oil can work too)
  • Distilled water or boiled water
  • Tea tree, thyme or cinnamon essential oil (antiviral and antibacterial properties)
  • Lotion
  • Pump bottle
  • Cheese grater or blender
  • Saucepan
  • Coffee filter

You could choose to reuse an old hand soap or hand sanitizer container, but you'll want to make sure you wash and rinse it out.

Boiling Water for Recipes

While many of the recipes will call for distilled water, you can boil water to remove bacteria. To do this, you'll want to let the water have a rolling boil for about 1 to 3 minutes. You can then place a coffee filter over a container and pour the water in. The coffee filter just works to remove any larger impurities in your water.

Homemade Liquid Hand Soap From Dish Soap

If you need liquid hand soap in a pinch, you don't need to look any farther than your kitchen sink. For this recipe, you'll grab your dish soap, lotion or oil and pump. Then, follow these steps:

  1. Add a quarter cup of dish soap to the container.
  2. Mix in 1 to 2 teapsoons of lotion or olive oil.
  3. Fill with distilled or boiled water.
  4. Add the cap and start dispensing.

How to Make Hand Soap From Bar Soap

If you have a few of your favorite bar soaps stocked up like Dove or Dial, you can use those. You might also choose to use natural bar soap like Dr. Bronner's bar soap or glycerine bar soap. For this recipe, you'll do the following:

  1. Cut off a quarter of the bar of soap and grate it by hand or with a blender.
  2. Put four cups of water in a saucepan.
  3. Add the soap shreds.
  4. Heat until the bar soap dissolves.
  5. Let cool and pour into your container. (Store extra in a mason jar or another container.)
  6. Allow the mixture to sit overnight to gel.
  7. Once gelled, use as normal.
  8. Optional: add a tsp of lotion or oil to add moisturizing.
  9. Optional: add 10-20 drops of essential oil for antiviral qualities.

Homemade Hand Soap With Castile Soap

If you are a natural DIYer, then you might have a bit of castile soap on hand. This works great to create your own hand soaps. For the castile soap recipe, you'll follow these instructions.

  1. In a soap dispenser, add a three-quarter cups of distilled water.
  2. Add about a quarter cup of castile soap.
  3. Give it a little shake to mix.
  4. Measure and add one tbsp of oil.
  5. Optional: add 10-20 drops of essential oil to add scent or antibacterial properties.

Antibacterial DIY Liquid Hand Soap

When it comes to making an antibacterial DIY hand soap, you'll want to look at both coconut oil and tea tree essential oil. Tea tree essential oil and coconut oil have antibacterial properties. This makes them great for creating a DYI hand soap to kill those nasty germs and viruses that make you sick. For this recipe, you'll need the castile soap then you'll:

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of coconut oil and a quarter cup of castile soap to a dispenser.
  2. Drop in about 15-20 drops of tea tree essential oil.
  3. Fill the rest with distilled or boiled water.
  4. Twist on the cap and start washing your hands.
  5. Optional: add 5-10 drops of essential oil for scent.
Coconut oil in a glass

Making Your Own Hand Soap

Hand soap is convenient. But just because you don't have time to go to the store or it's out of stock, doesn't mean you are out of luck. Instead, you can make natural hand soaps using materials you might have at home. And, it's super cheap. Now, it's time to get making your own liquid hand soap.

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How to Make DIY Liquid Hand Soap