Homemade Liquid Dish Soap

I have given you a recipe for Homemade Dish Washing Detergent, but since then, I've received a couple of questions about homemade liquid Dish Soap for those of us (like me) who don't have dishwashers.

I played around and came up with a recipe that I really like.  And the best part is: it's simple to make and smells good.  (I love the smell of Ivory.  It reminds me of my Mom's Mom's house.  Her house was always spotless and smelled so clean!)  

 See how nice and thick it looks! 

Ingredients:

• 2 quarts (8 cups) of water
• 1/2 bar of your favorite soap  (I use Ivory, but you can use castle or whatever you like best.)
• 2 cups of vinegar to cut the grease  (I suppose lemon juice would do the trick too, but citrus takes the shine out of your silver ware too, so I use vinegar.)

Directions:

Boil water on stove top.  Grate your bar of soap (I use my food processor) and add it to the boiling water.  Mix well.  Let simmer.  Remove from heat and mix with electric mixer.  Be sure the soap and water is mixed well so that it doesn't separate.  Return to stove and simmer a little longer.  Remove from stove and add vinegar (or lemon juice).  Mix with mixer again.  Let cool a bit.  Pour into whatever container you want to keep it in and let it sit for a while to thicken. (Be careful not to pour HOT liquid into a plastic container as it could melt the container and/or burn you.)  Mine fit into a 14 ounce bottle with a tiny bit left over.

(You probably don't need to mix as much as I did, but I didn't want it to seperate and I already had the mixer out - so why not??  You can play with it and do your own thing.)

There will not be any bubbles.  We have grown so accustomed to seeing bubbles that we don't feel we've cleaned anything without them, but we must remember bubbles don't clean things.  Soap does!

Also ~ If your soap ends up a little too thick, you can simply dilute it with a little water until you like it.

Extra Info:

I tried borax in the first batch, but my second batch did fine without it.  Some people consider borax harmful because it kills bugs (woop-dee-do, so does baking soda!).  Borax is a sodium bicarbonate of Borac Acid.  Borac Acid is toxic.  If you look at borax under a microscope you will see that it's very sharp; much like a salt crystal.  Because of this it could be considered hard on your skin.

I don't suggest that you put borax in the sand box or spread it on the floor and allow your children to lick it up, but I don't have a problem keeping it in my house.  I use it in my laundry detergent and I use it to clean the bathroom, along with a few other things.  I do keep it up and away from my younger children though. 

My point is that I decided to try a formula without the borax and it worked just fine, so there really isn't a reason to use it anyway.  You can play with it and come up with something that works for you.


Update:
After using this dish washing soap for a few weeks, I went back to Seventh Generation.  My dishes had a soap scum film on them and I assumed it had something to do with our hard water.  So many of my readers were thrilled with this soap, so I assumed that there was something wrong on my end and hard water was all I could come up with.

Today, I had reader ask why this soap left her dishes greasy feeling.  My answer:  Oh, NO!!!  {actually, that's what I was thinking!}  I hope I haven't wasted everyone's time and money by leaving this post up.  I really did like this soap for the first few days.....  If you tried this soap and didn't like it, let me know and I'll take the post down!!

I assure you the other homemade cleansers do work and I do use all of them! 

• Laundry Detergent and Dryer Sheets
• Fabric Softener
•  Deodorant - No Aluminum 
• Dish Washing Detergent  
• Soap