Homemade Dish Soap: How to Make Your Own Health-Friendly Cleaner

If you are trying to "go green," one of the first places you'll want to start is in the kitchen. Daily, we expose our skin to chemicals in dish soap. Is there reason for concern?

Dish soaps contain a veritable cocktail of questionable ingredients: chlorine, alkyl phenoxy ethanols, phosphates, DCM, DEA, sodium lauryl sulfate, to name a few. And to add to the chemical onslaught, dishwashing liquid may contain synthetic fragrances that mask the chemical odor and make them smell more appealing.

You wouldn't bathe in chemicals you can barely pronounce, so why put your hands in them on a daily basis?

These chemicals do more than just cause skin irritation. A number of chemicals found in common household products are poisonous and carcinogenic. Do you really want these chemicals being absorbed through your skin? And unless you rinse, very, very well, chances are, chemical residues are left over on your skin, on your dishes and on cutlery. If you are using commercially-produced dish soaps, there is really no getting away from the chemicals.

You can protect yourself and your loved ones by switching to a safer products. It may help to start with products you use each day in your kitchen, then eliminate products used to clean your bathroom, then tackle the products you use to clean the rest of your house. When you finally achieve a chemical-free home, you'll have peace of mind, knowing you no longer come into contact with chemicals that can make you and other family members sick.

While we can't control the chemicals in the environment, certainly, we can take steps to reduce our exposure--and the first place to start is on the home front.

If you would like to try making your own, this article discusses ideas as to how to make your own dish soap. The process doesn't have to be convoluted or expensive. Much depends on the ingredients you use to make either a liquid or the dry ingredients you use to clean your dishes.

It's easy to make your own homemade dish soap and it takes just minutes. This first batch of dish soap can be used if you are reacting to your regular dish soap and encountering skin irritation or rashes. This makes a thick mixture and you may opt to further refine the recipe to change the consistency by adding additional water.

I would suggest using this dish soap if you want to switch right away to a safer dishwashing mixture; however, while Ivory is a purer soap, because it comes in a bar, it likely has thickening ingredients to turn it into an actual bar. I've found that the mixture becomes viscous and continues to thicken. This homemade dish soap can be used, in a pinch, whenever you run out of dish soap or until you can make a thinner homemade dish soap using ingredients suitable for a thinner mixture (see below).

Homemade Dish Soap

1. Grate a bar of ivory soap.
2. Add 1 tsp. of grated soap to empty plastic containers. Old shampoo bottles work well.
3. Fill each container with hot water and shake well.
4. Allow to sit and continue to shake containers until soap dissolves.

This mixture will continue to thicken so it is important to dilute it well. It is now ready to use for washing dishes.

Alternatively, if you don't like how this thickens (and I didn't after trying it), you can simply grate a bar of Ivory soap and keep it in a container close to your sink. Sprinkle grated soap in sink and run hot water over it.

If you don't want to bother grating your Ivory soap, simply hold a bar under the tap as you are running your hot water and your sink will fill with suds. These don't last long but once you get used to using safer products, you soon unlearn your familiarity with dishwashing liquid that bubbles to beat heck and covers your dishes with chemicals.

For this formula, you will need castile soap. This can be purchased at whole foods stores or organic/green outlets or it may be ordered online.

This results in a mixture with a better consistency and may be preferred.

Homemade Dish Soap

• 2 cups of liquid castile soap
• 1/2 cup of warm water

Shake bottle to mix ingredients and shake again prior to use.

Purchasing and keeping a large amount of castile soup on hand means you can easily make your own dishwashing liquid. If you order this online, you may be able to buy enough to qualify for free shipping and reduce your costs. Additionally, castile soap can be used for other cleaning tasks around the home.

It just doesn't get any easier than this.If you don't have Ivory soap on hand, you can sprinkle baking soda over your dishes and run hot water into the sink.

Store your baking soda in a container near your sink. (Optional: add a couple of drops of scented oil to your soda so that it has a wonderful smell.)

Baking soda works well for cutting grease and giving shine to dishes, and as a known deodorizer, it will act to deodorize your sink and drain, as well.

If you don't have castile soap readily available, Borax is usually available in supermarkets. The following video discusses an easy method to make dish soap using only two ingredients.

Some people like to add a few drops of essential oils to their homemade dish soap. This can impart a wonderful scent but is, of course, completely optional.

Using any of these ideas, you are now set to make your own dish soap, without having to rely on chemical-laden products to get the job done. With a few simple ingredients and a little ingenuity, you can clean your dishes with your own homemade dish soap using Ivory, castile soap or baking soda or some of the other ingredients mentioned in this article. Simply stock up ahead of time and you'll be good to go.