Healthy Living

Liquid hand soap is hard to find these days. Sure you can use a bar of soap and a well-dried bar of soap will last forever. But, I find liquid soap is faster and more effective when trying to ensure kids get their hands truly clean. My usual auto-ship order of both soft soap and dial hand soap was canceled by Amazon so I had to figure out another plan. We decided to make our own liquid soap from bar soap. This idea was inspired by the last season of The Handmades Tale where they collected bars of soap to make a liquid soap for covering windows. I figured if you can use a bar of soap to make liquid soap you can use that soap for liquid hand soap. What soap can you use to make liquid hand soap? I decided to use my favorite soap Yardly Lavender bar for making liquid hand soap because the bugs have started to wake up for the year and the lemongrass is a great way to add protection by repelling mosquitoes. Another great repelling soap is Zote Soap but be sure to only use 1/4 to 1/2 of the bar. Lavender has so many handy uses. You can use any skin free bar soap to make liquid hand soap. I would choose a soap that is gentle on the hands like Ivory or Yardly. If you use Ivory you can skip cutting or grating your soap and stick it into the microwave for 1 minute and watch it turn into a cloud you can crush down. How to make your own liquid soap Making liquid soap is easy. You will need: Bar of soap6 cups watercheese grater or knifeSoup pot How to make your own liquid hand soap Making your own liquid hand soap is easy. To begin you need to break the soap down as small as you can get it. This can be done easily with a cheese grater but is fairly easy to do with a knife. think about that science from last season of The Handmaids Tale where June was making the liquid soap they greased the gate and covered the windows with. Place this soap in a large pot with water. Heat while string until all of the soap is melted. this will make a thin watery liquid nothing like the hand soap you are used to. I suggest using a metal string implement or a whisk you purchased just for this to avoid flavoring your dishes with soap. I had to soap ours for a few days to get the soap out. Let sit for a few hours or overnight In the next few hours your hand soap will thicken. If it gets too thick due to having a larger size bar of soap simply add more water and mix until blended. If you do not have a funnel to make it easy to fill your bottles you can use an old child medicine syringe to get the job done without a huge mess. If you want to make it fun for the kids you can add a bit of shimmer using powdered eye shadow like we did with the sensory snow. Helping keep your families hands clean In these crazy times, more and more people are discovering that our habits may need some improvement. While hand sanitizer is great for when you are out of the house washing your hands with soap and water is the most effective way to get rid of harmful germs without killing the bacteria you need on your skin for a healthy immune system. Liquid soap like this is more effective because it can lather and reach every part of your hands faster with less work than a bar soap. If you have kids it is also a lot cleaner for kids to use liquid soap to remove dirt and mud from their hands after coming inside.