All of our hand soap pump jars have been emptied out. They sat about the house for a while, nobody willing to spend the money to replace them or buy refills. Missus looked up a method online for making refills and ran through that, and next thing I knew there was a nine-liter pot of soap sat on the stovetop.
We put it all into pump bottles and the extra we put into containers that we bought at the local Dollar Tree that were filled with other liquids that we emptied into larger containers around the house that needed refilling with the likes of fabric softener. So, my first money saving tip is to buy something like a fabric softener or vinegar container to refill or replace what’s empty at home rather than some fancy dedicated container. We bought a few different products for less than one empty dedicated container. They refilled larger containers we had at home and provided several containers we were able to split up the soap into and distribute them as refills in both bathrooms.
Okay, onto the soap, and how she made it so cheap that all this was worth it!
Ingredients:
A bar of soap.
Two cups of water per ounce of soap.
1/4 Cup Glycerin. (Optional)
That was the recipe she found, but that was still too thick, so we mixed in four more cups when that was done to thin it out some more. You may need to adjust based on the soap you use, and your preferences. This is easy to work out for yourself.
That’s it! Grate the soap. Add the grated soap to the water that has been brought to just short of a boil and removed from the heat. Mix the soap and water till the soap is dissolved, then cover it and let it sit to cool for 12 hours. We also added a quarter of a cup of glycerin as a moisturize to this batch. That is up to you. We ran a hand mixer through ours when it was ready to go into the jars. We also used a reasonable sized funnel to get the soapy gel into them. Once it was done, they were ready for distribution to the bathrooms for use.
A note on the soap: I suspect one could use just about any kind of bar soap. Where we have a TJ Maxx fairly close by we decided that going forward it is fine to spend four bucks on the bar of soap and get something nice from Italy because this method is so efficient.