How to Make Homemade Dish Soap

When I was looking up DIY projects on Pinterest, I saw an all-natural dish soap that can be made with three ingredients. This post from DIY Natural seemed quick, easy, and affordable so I figured I'd give it a shot and let you guys know how it went!

First off, if you don't have these ingredients at home, you can find them online or in the laundry/cleaning aisle of your grocery store. Borax is great for making laundry detergent (which will be a future post!) but I also used it to make slime. Fels-Naptha is a hard soap that's great for making dish soap, laundry detergent, etc.

While the water was boiling, I grated the soap to kill the time. You really don't need that much, just 1 Tablespoon's worth, so it should only take you a couple minutes.

When I first poured the hot water into the Borax/Fels-Naptha mixture and stirred, there were a lot of bubbles but don't be surprised if they go away hours later.

Be sure to stir every hour for the 6-8 hours you decide to let it set. I skipped an hour and because of the Borax, it had almost the same consistency as slime, so try to whisk it once an hour.

I had an empty Ajax bottle on hand and after 6 hours, I poured the mixture into the bottle and shook it up. You'll see it doesn't even full up half the bottle.

After making the soap, of course I had to try it and this is where I became skeptical. When you use the soap, there are no bubbles. At all. I've been trained by the dish soap corporations that bubbles = clean dishes so when I didn't see any, I felt like I was just running the dishes under water. While it's "all natural", and would probably save you a lot of money over time, dish soap isn't that expensive so it's completely up to your lifestyle which option you prefer!

TOTAL COSTS: About $10 
$4.25 for Fels-Naptha Laundry Bar Soap (but you're only going to use 1 Tablespoon's worth)

$5.46 for 20 Mule Team Borax on Amazon (realized it was cheaper in the store after I bought it online! Note this is for about 5 pounds worth and you're only using a 1 Tablespoon)

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 6 hours, 10 minutes
5 minutes to grate soap and boil water
5 minutes to let the water cool before adding to mixture
6 hours to sit

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
It doesn't get much easier than this! Give it a shot and see if you can be an all-natural soap maker!