How to Make Dish Soap- A DIY Recipe

Everyone's journey with making sustainable swaps is very different. But maybe you are a little like me when I first started and you want to figure out a DIY solution for everything.

As I started reading the ingredient lists of the household products I had used for years and realizing that they were toxic to me and the environment, I started obsessing over finding DIY alternatives.

Many different concoctions were created during this period.

Not all stayed... but one of them that I continued to try to figure out and perfect was my recipe for Dish Soap.

Prior to starting my sustainability journey, I was never one to even purchase name brand dish soap. It didn't matter if it was blue, green, yellow or orange... I was just grabbing the cheapest thing on the shelf. Most dish soaps that are readily available in stores contain ingredients I had never heard of before. I started typing words like Cocamide DEA, DMDM hydantoin, Ethanolamine, Formaldehyde, and Propylene Glycol into my search bar.

After discovering what these words meant and reading up on their side effects, I was more than sure I wanted to switch it up. So the quest to figure out how to make a DIY replacement started. I started by making some recipes I found online, but a few attempts in, I wasn't fully satisfied with the results.

After some trail and error I came up with this recipe, and it‘s what I still use today years later. I find it to be effective at cleaning and leaving stemware streak free, and it is easy to put together.

The recipe I came up with has five simple ingredients:

1.5 Cups of Water

1 T of Baking Soda

1 tsp of Super Washing Soda

1/4 Cup (4 T) of Castile soap

10-20 drops of essential oils

Why I chose these Ingredients

Baking Soda is sodium bicarbonate, which is a salt. It has a high PH, so when it is added to water it increases the waters PH- making the water alkaline. Alkaline breaks down greases and oil.

Super washing soda acts as a water softener to help break down minerals that might leave cloudy spots.

Castile soap is an incredibly versatile and earth friendly soap.

Citrus essential oils are great for removing grease and grime and have antibacterial properties.

Directions:

Boil 1.5 Cups of water, or heat in microwave.

Whisk in 1 T of Baking Soda

Slowly add while stirring 1 tsp of Super Washing Soda

Add 1/4 cup of Castile Soap and blend mixture well.

*Optional: add 1-2 T of Vegetable Glycerin to thicken and smooth mixture.

Let cool for 5 minutes before adding 10-20 drops of Essential Oil.

Whisk to blend oils into mixture.

Pour into glass dispense.

My favorite Essential Oil Blends for Dish Soap are:

8 drops of Grapefruit

8 drops of Wild Orange

4 drops of On Guard

12 drops of Lemon

6 drops of Grapefruit

2 drops of Basil

I get my glass dispenser HERE.

I get my essential oils HERE.

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.