I Made Soap!

Sort of.

In my last post I talked about how I wanted to eliminate more chemicals from our lives. My starting point was switching our hand soap. The chemicals in the soap we were using made my hands so dry and chapped it was painful and no amount of lotion, oil, etc. helped.

So I searched around on Pinterest and found several different ways to make hand soap. The simplest one I found was to use Dr. Bronner's soap.

I bought the 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint at Target.

I dumped the rest of our Bath & Body Works soap down the sink and rinsed the bottle/dispenser out really well. I had to "pump" it several times to make sure all the old soap was out of it. It's a foaming dispenser which seems to be what works best according to Pinterest. 

All I did was fill the bottle about 1/4 with the Peppermint soap (which is organic), then filled the rest with water (not all the way to the top or it will make a mess when you screw the dispenser back on). You can also add some essential oils like tea tree, which is an antibacterial oil, or some other oil. I didn't have any essential oils, so I just used the soap and water (the soap does have a lot of oils in it). Then I gently shook the bottle to mix the soap and water. 

Voila! Organic hand soap that won't destroy your
hands! 

I have loved it so far. Chris seems indifferent to it. He liked the way the Bath & Body Works soap smelled (vanilla) and apparently wasn't having as many problems with dry hands as I was. But he's tolerating it for me :)

If you're having issues with dry skin like I was or just want to rid your household of harsh chemicals, I highly recommend using this method. My hands haven't transformed overnight. I wash my hands a lot throughout the day, so by the time I was able to make this soap, my hands were in really bad shape. But there has been a noticeable difference, and I think with some more coconut oil at night, my hands will be in much better shape!