Moisturizing Homemade Hand Soap

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Homemade hand soap is quite possibly one of the easiest things to make. If you are looking for a way to reduce toxins in your home using this moisturizing homemade hand soap recipe is a great spot to start. 

Hand soap in itself isn’t expensive to be honest. However, in an effort to be constantly saving as much money as possible I found that it is cheaper to make it yourself. I bought my ingredients in bulk from Azure Standard. I would apologize for always mentioning that in every blog post but I also know that they are one of the best things that has happened to me. They have such a wide variety of items that they carry and are also cost friendly. I will forever be sharing them because they’ve given me a lot of opportunity to have a healthier home. I did a full review of Azure Clean products so you can see if they will fit in your home too!

Types of Soap Dispensers

The other thing I like about this recipe is that I can put it in cute soap dispensers. A lot of people find that DIY hand soap is really runny. Myself included! In the first batch of soap I made it felt too much like water being squirted out. It was hard to feel like my hands were truly clean without using a few pumps. To counteract that they use the foaming hand soap dispensers. The guar gum in this recipe makes it a thicker hand soap so that it’s the best of both worlds. I don’t have to use plastic soap dispensers but it’s thick enough to feel like it’s working.

We use glass dispensers in our home mainly because we don’t have children. I don’t want to shame anyone that is using plastic by any means! I like glass because plastic can also contain toxins but if you have a need to use plastic dispensers it still helps to have non-toxic soap in them. Stainless steel is also a good option for kids too! Any effort to remove toxins still counts!

WARNING! DON’T SKIP THIS!

DO NOT JUST MIX ALL INGREDIENTS TOGETHER. I failed to read the directions when I was making this the first time. I just threw it all together in the dispenser and was sorely disappointed at the result. It left these great big clumps in my soap that looked disgusting. I’m too cheap to just throw it out so I put it in the bathroom that no one sees! I was frustrated every time I looked at it though because I couldn’t believe myself. If you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know  I’m not great at following directions. I like to just mix everything together and move on. Unfortunately, this is not one of those recipes. The result is definitely worth it though. When mixed properly the guar gum leads to a slightly thicker soap. Just make sure you dissolve it in the oil before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients.

Carrier Oils

The guar gum in this soap makes it thicker but the oil that is used also makes it moisturizing. No one wants soap that is going to dry out their hands. I like jojoba oil because it is better for sensitive skin. If you have normal skin hempseed, coconut, rapeseed, sunflower, or almond oils are all good choices. For dry skin avocado, rosehips, argan, and olive oil are good choices. If you have sensitive skin (like me) jojoba, sesame seed, and apricot oil are all good choices. I would recommend using those for sensitive skin if you have kids in your home too just to make sure their delicate skin is taken care of. 

Ingredients For Moisturizing Homemade Hand Soap

½ cup water

½ cup castile soap

2 tbs oil of choice (I use jojoba but you can use any carrier oil here)

1 level teaspoon of guar gum

15 drops essential oils (can use 1 or make a blend)

Directions

Put your oil in a small bowl and mix in the guar gum. In your soap dispenser mix the water, castile soap, and essential oil(s). Add in the oil and guar gum mixture. Mix well. After about a minute or so of mixing you should notice that your liquid has become more of a gel and that’s exactly what you are looking for. 

I doubled this batch to fill my glass soap dispenser. 

In Summary: Moisturizing Homemade Hand Soap

This moisturizing homemade hand soap, shown above, has an off-white hue when it is finished so it’s definitely not the prettiest soap out there. If you wanted to put in some non-toxic food coloring it would definitely be more pretty. I would stick to the non-toxic kind though otherwise it kind of ruins the whole purpose of making it yourself!

There are tons of essential oil blends out there that would work perfect for this soap too. My castile soap already has lavender in it so I always try to base the essential oils that I use around that. So far, my favorites include tea tree, rose, eucalyptus, chamomile, geranium, lemon, lemongrass, rosemary, vetiver, and valerian. My personal favorite is one I call restful rose with 2 drops of rose, 3 drops of geranium, and 3 drops of lavender. I still think it’s fun to experiment and find more blends though. If you find one in particular that you love please share it with us in the comments!