In an effort to reduce toxins, chemical fragrances, and hormone-distruptors in my life as much as possible, I’ve been making many of my household cleaning products (It’s amazing what baking soda and vinegar can do). One product I’ve been experimenting with for over a year has been homemade liquid dish soap. Whatever recipe I found, I was never 100% happy with. They left a film on our dishware, the consistency was too thin, and/or they didn’t effectively cut through grease. After many trials and errors, I’m quite happy with my current formula and I’m excited to share it with you!

I want to mention that this recipe contains xanthan gum. While I don’t encourage ingesting it and I personally try to avoid it when I see it on the ingredients list, it’s considered relatively safe for anyone without digestive issues. It’s also the one ingredient that has been able to thicken castile soap beautifully from my personal experience (and I’ve tried many things), so I do use it to get that thick consistency of store-bought dish soap. If you want to avoid xanthan gum completely and don’t mind your soap being thin, you can leave it out.

In our household, C is the one that’s usually doing the dishes, and he really likes this soap. He’s actually quite picky when it comes to fragrances and rolls his eyes at my “hippie” homemaking, but he’s totally on board with some of my homemade products, including this one. It’s simple to make with relatively short ingredients list, cuts through grease fabulously, and I highly encourage you to try it out!

Homemade Liquid Dish Soap Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp washing soda
• 1/4 cup vegetable glycerine
• 1 & 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 1/2 cup liquid castile soap
• 10 drops of essential oils (lavender, peppermint, lemon, and/or tea tree oil are great choices)

Instructions

1. In a medium saucepan, heat the water to boil and then turn it down to simmer.
2. 
Add washing soda and whisk until it dissolves.
In a separate bowl, combine xanthan gum and vegetable glycerine, and whisk until xanthan gum is dissolved.
3. Add liquid castile soap to the vegetable glycerine mixture and whisk again.
4. Pour this into the washing soda water, and whisk until they are thoroughly combined.
Remove from heat and let cool.
5. Add essential oil drops, pour into a pump bottle, preferably made with glass.
6. 
Use to wash dishes as you normally would.

Notes

The soap may separate or clump up in the bottle. If this happens, you can run hot water over the bottle and shake it to make sure that the liquid is evenly distributed before using.